Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much has been spent from the public purse on encouraging under-represented groups to join the police through media outlets that serve BAME communities in the last 10 months.

Attracting a broad range of talent, cultures and backgrounds to a career in policing is a core ambition in our drive to recruit 20,000 extra police officers, therefore reaching under-represented audiences is a key element of the Police Recruitment campaign strategy.

The national advertising campaign is planned and bought to reach a wide range of people from all backgrounds. Evaluation of campaign activity in May and June 2020 suggests that campaign messages reached almost 94% of 18-54 year olds from ethnic minority communities.

Campaign activity includes TV and radio advertising on channels which serve minority ethnic communities, such as BET, Brit Asia TV and Colourful Radio. To date, over £38k has been invested in these channels. In addition, £74K has been set aside to date for reaching under-represented groups through partnerships with media outlets which specifically serve minority ethnic communities.

We also continue to work with Police Associations to encourage under-represented audiences from their communities to consider a career in policing. This is includes working with them to develop new communications content for them to use on their no-cost channels which will also be used to support new individual tailored web pages for each Police Association on the www.joiningthepolice.co.uk campaign website.