Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of breathtaking spin by Greater Manchester’s Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd after she criticised the police service for its lack of ethnic diversity.
Ms May has rightly demanded that more people from ethnic minority communities should be recruited to the police. But Tony says it is the Government that’s stopping Greater Manchester Police from doing so – GMP is unable to recruit new staff because of the cuts she has imposed.
He said: “Theresa May rightly identifies the lack of diversity throughout the police service as a problem which serves neither British society nor British policing.
“But what she deliberately fails to spot is where the responsibility for that lies – it’s with her and her Government.
“Here in Greater Manchester we have lost more than 1,500 officers as a direct result of the massive cuts imposed by the Home Secretary – that’s a fifth of our workforce. Had we been allowed to replace those officers we would have been able to radically transform the ethnic make-up of the service. I can say with confidence that had we been allowed to continue to recruit there would now be at least 300 new police officers from ethnic minority backgrounds patrolling the streets of Greater Manchester today.
“But these cuts have meant we have missed that opportunity. And the blame for that lies squarely at the door of Theresa May. Her words may be fine but they are hollow and amount to nothing more than breathtaking spin.
“I’ve got a simple message for the Home Secretary: give us the money and we will transform policing to ensure it reflects the diversity of our society. But by continuing to deny us the money to properly fund policing you demonstrate that you are the problem.”
