The Scottish Parliament has ended its membership of Stonewall's Diversity Champions programme, The Herald has learned.
A Holyrood spokesperson said membership expired in February 2024 and the LGBT+ organisation was informed earlier this month that it would not be renewed.
The parliament paid £3,090 a year to be part of the Diversity Champions Programme, which the charity describes as "the leading employers' programme for ensuring all LGBTQ+ staff are free to be themselves in the workplace".
READ MORE: SNP blocks own MSP's urgent debate bid on ferry fiasco firm sacking
Employers that sign up are offered advice and guidance and are entered into the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index and Global Workplace Equality Index, where they are benchmarked against other companies.
The scheme has proved controversial in recent years, with a number of quangos and UK Government departments pulling out, including the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Justice.
The BBC left in 2021 as they said their membership raised questions about impartiality on issues that the charity was campaigning about.
While the Equality and Human Rights Commission left the programme as they felt it “did not constitute the best value for money."
A Scottish Parliament spokesperson said: “Our Stonewall membership enabled us to advance equality for our LGBT+ staff and implement our Trans and Non-Binary Policy for employees and managers.
“While we informed Stonewall earlier this month that we would not be renewing our membership, we continue to have positive relations with the organisation.”
Stonewall says more than 900 organisations in the UK have signed up to be Diversity Champions. It is one of the charity's main fundraisers.
The most recent accounts show the charity brought in £7 million in 2022-23, with £3.9 million coming from the programme.
READ MORE: Ministers to be given a free vote on Scots Assisted Dying Bill
Holyrood’s decision to leave the scheme comes after last week’s decision to ban staff wearing rainbow lanyards.
From Thursday, workers employed by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body will not be allowed to wear lanyards relating to "social movements" and must instead wear the parliament-issued purple one.
The new rule does not apply to MSPs or their staff.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel