West Yorkshire Police is facing allegations of potentially violating UK equality laws by allegedly prioritizing applicants from ethnic minorities in its recruitment process.
West Yorkshire Police is under fire for recruitment tactics after reports surfaced that the chief constable expressed a desire to favor ethnic minority applicants over white candidates, according to The Telegraph.
The recruitment strategy aims to increase police diversity by prioritizing ethnic minority applicants, the report stated. The police force is said to allow applications from underrepresented groups throughout the year, while white British applicants are restricted to specific recruitment periods.
The approach is reportedly intended to address the gap between the 9% of officers from minority backgrounds and the 23% representation of these communities within West Yorkshire’s population.
Chief Constable John Robins has been advocating for changes to British law to increase the number of ethnic minority officers in his force.
The outlet quoted him as saying: “It worked in terms of religion in Northern Ireland. We’ve tried really, really hard over many decades, especially in the last five to 10 years, but there’s just systemic issues around applications. I think the time has now come that legislation should change so that we should [use] positive discrimination,”
West Yorkshire Police is said to be suspending applications from white British candidates while accepting year-round applications from under-represented groups, including Black and Asian individuals. The article suggests applicants were categorized into tiers, with Black and South Asian candidates in the highest ‘gold’ tier and East Asians in the ‘silver’ tier.
Meanwhile, applicants classified as ‘white others’—including those from Britain, Ireland, and Eastern Europe—were reportedly placed in the lowest ‘bronze’ tier.
The recruitment policy has sparked concerns about potential illegal positive discrimination and has been met with strong criticism, with Conservative MP Neil O’Brien calling it “racist.”
He told The Telegraph: “What West Yorkshire police are doing with their racist hiring policies and division of different ethnic groups is skirting the edge of the law,”
“With gun crime in West Yorkshire at a record high, many people might think local police might have more important things to be focusing on.”
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss also criticized the approach, stating that Britain has a “serious problem” with “anti-white discrimination.”
She wrote on X on Saturday: “It cannot stand that a police chief is openly pursuing racist hiring policies and making political statements,” adding, “Decisions are being made by unaccountable people who have been captured by woke ideology.”
The policy follows reports that West Yorkshire Police spent £1.4 million ($1.8 million) on diversity staff, which some have called “patronizing” to the public. The force is said to employ 19 diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) officers and invests £361,000 ($476,000) in their training.
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