A protection adviser standing as a candidate for Reform UK has complained about Health & Protection’s Pride coverage, arguing that hearing from the LGBTQ+ community is not for a professional publication.
Mark Belch, director of Active Business Protection, is standing for Reform UK in the City of Durham constituency at this week’s general election.
Belch wrote to Health & Protection’s editor on 29 June in response to that day’s newsletter which included several pieces from the LGBTQ+ community which formed part of the publication’s Pride Month coverage.
Belch said: “My interest in health and protection insurance, as a qualified professional of over 40 years, is in the market for health and protection insurance.
“I have no interest in peoples’ personal sex lives, ‘sexuality’ or ‘authentic self’.
“If you consider these topics to be so relevant as to be headline news, then it is little wonder that the industry is in such a dysfunctional state.”
He also requested to be removed from Health & Protection’s mailing list.
In a subsequent message Belch said industry publications should be concentrating on covering deteriorating provider service and added that hearing from the LGBTQ+ community was primarily a social and political issue.
Health & Protection has given lots of coverage to provider service issues, but also covers diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues, which are today a common focus of UK corporates.
In his response, Belch said: “The dysfunctional issues I was referring to relate to the inefficiencies and low quality of service that brokers and customers receive from insurers and other financial service providers.
“These are serious issues that are damaging our industry and should be first and foremost for addressing by publications such as yours.
“Hence, my point is that we should be more concerned about sorting these damaging problems than issues which are primarily social, and should be dealt with on a political and social level rather than in a professional forum.
“I am informed on this subject by Dr Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, who points to the errors made in the FCA’s interpretation of the academic research on the subject of diversity, and that the link between diversity and customer welfare is unproven.
“I go back to the point I am making that, first and foremost we should be looking at customer service and not inwardly looking at what are, in effect, political issues in the workplace.
“If I am elected in the City of Durham, I will certainly support efforts to ensure that sexuality, race and religion are in no way used as opportunities to discriminate against any person in any situation.”
“Health & Protection aims to give a voice to people across the industries it covers who previously have been marginalised or even discriminated against, a position that is particularly important in a sector which has historically been lacking in diversity.”
Later research by Dr Edmans and two colleagues last year and updated in April has found there were some, albeit weak, correlations between diversity and inclusion and company performance.
The paper found DEI perceptions among professional workers, such as R&D employees, are significantly correlated with the number and quality of patents. However, DEI exhibits no link with future stock returns. (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4426488).
The candidates in the City of Durham constituency are:
- Mark Belch, Reform UK
- Jonathan Elmer, Green
- Mary Foy, Labour
- Luke Holmes, Conservative
- Sarah Welbourne, Social Democratic Party
- Mark Wilkes, Liberal Democrat
