HOME SECRETARY Priti Patel has firmly rejected Metropolitan Police chief Dame Cressida Dick's call for "positive discrimination" to be introduced during the recruitment process to hire more people from ethnic minorities.
The Met chief proposed applying a form of positive discrimination to increase BAME recruits saying police forces must reflect the society they serve to achieve the confidence of diverse communities. As per her proposal, she wants more legal scope to allow the Met Police to choose black and ethnic minority applicants over their white peers.
However, the home secretary office has apparently rejected the idea.
“It’s fair to say positive discrimination is illegal for a reason,” a Home Office source told The Daily Mail on Tuesday (1), stressing that “lawful positive action” could be taken, but there is “no need for positive discrimination to increase the diversity of the police.”
More than 40 per cent of London residents are black, Asian or minority ethnic as compared to just 18 per cent in the Met’s workforce. The Met wants to increase its intake to 40 per cent of all officers by next April to increase its diversity, for which its chief has been lobbying the proposal, backed by Met assistant commissioner Neil Basu.
Some Tory MPs have branded the proposal “discrimination against white people” and called for Dame Cressida to focus on recruiting “the best person for the job.”
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said he is “more interested in officers who can enforce the law rather than meeting a quota” and accused the Met chief of “heading off into dangerous territory” while she should rather “ensure there is no racism in the force.”
They have also warned that the Met Police's plan to bulk its number of black and ethnic minority officers could be seen as “lowering the bar.”
Tory MP Bob Blackman branded the positive discrimination idea as “demeaning” and “an insult to people of different minority communities,” adding that Met needed to encourage people from different communities and cautioned that should it be made a law it will “breed resentment’ among colleagues."
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Poppy Jaman
