Theresa May to confront police over 'incredible' lack of diversity

The Home Secretary raised her concerns in a speech to the National Black Police Association Conference

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Theresa May has confronted police forces over an “incredible” lack of black officers while also challenging “lies” that reform of the controversial stop and search policy has led to a rise in knife crime.

In a hard-hitting speech to the National Black Police Association Conference in Birmingham the Home Secretary criticised the lack of black and minority ethnic (BME) representation across the country revealing that four forces do not have a single black officer.

She challenged each of the 43 England and Wales police forces to increase the diversity of their workforce, announcing the publication of a force-by-force overview of the proportion of BME and female officers.

The data, available on the police.uk website also reveals: no force has a BME representation that matches its local demographic, 11 forces have no BME officer at Chief Inspector rank or above, and of the two BME chief officers in England and Wales, both are in the Met.

Mrs May said: “This is simply not good enough. I hope these figures will provide chief constables with the information they need to identify areas for improvement and for the public and PCCs to hold them to account.”

In an obvious slap-down of Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, who earlier this year blamed the reduction of stop and search for a rise in knife crime, Mrs May told the conference: “It is simply not true that knife crime is rising because the police are no longer stopping and searching those carrying knives”.

The Home Secretary referred to last week’s Office for National Statistics report which said the rise in violent crime is likely to be as a result of better recording.

She said: “I know there are those who say that our reforms have gone too far… but to them I say this: stop and search reform has worked, it must continue, and – if you look at the evidence – it shows no link whatsoever with violent crime. We must not jettison all that good work for the sake of a knee-jerk reaction on the back of a false link.”