Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what incentives her Department has put in place to help increase the diversity of local police officers in (a) Dudley North constituency and (b) the UK.

This Government’s commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 officers provides a once in generation opportunity to improve diversity and this Government has been clear that all forces should be striving to become representative of the communities served. Through the Police Uplift Programme, we are supporting all forces, including West Midlands Police, with a variety of attraction and recruitment strategies, whilst delivering a national campaign that’s been designed to reach the widest and most diverse audience possible.

Some forces have made significant improvements in the rate of Black, Asian and minority ethnic joiners through successful positive action measures. Information is available on police.uk that shows the ethnicity and gender representation for each police force compared to local force area populations. This allows the public to hold forces to account.

The Government has also supported innovative schemes, such as Police Now, which are making the police workforce more diverse than ever before; showing that we can attract the brightest and best into policing, whilst introducing new perspectives from some of the country’s most challenging neighbourhoods.