Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the rate of diversity in relation to special constables.

Police forces that reflect the communities they serve are crucial to tackling crime in a modern diverse society. The police have worked hard to improve equality and diversity in policing and the workforce is more representative than ever before.

The Special Constabulary are currently the most ethnically diverse part of the police workforce. As of 31 March 2019, approximately 11 per cent of all special constables who have stated their ethnicity identified as black and minority ethnic background. This compared with 6.9 per cent of regular police officers who have stated their ethnicity in the same period. Females accounted for 29 per cent of all special constables, slightly lower than for full-time police officers where 30.4 per cent are female.