Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of current police officers are from BAME backgrounds; and what assessment they have made of how familiar police officers are with the cultural practices of the communities they are policing.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the ethnicity of police officers on an annual basis in the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales.

The latest data show that, as at 31 March 2019, there were 8,329 BAME police officers in the 43 forces in England and Wales, representing 6.9% of all officers who stated their ethnicity.

Police professional training standards are set and maintained by the College of Policing which the Government established as the first professional body for the police in 2012.