Chief constables are facing demands to scrap their ‘two-tier’ commitment to treating white people differently to ethnic minorities.
Under a so-called Anti-Racism Commitment published last year, policing leaders say that ‘racial equity’ should not mean ‘treating everyone the same or being colour blind’.
Instead they say their goal is to produce ‘equality of policing outcomes’ by ending the racial disparity in the ‘likelihood of people being criminalised’.
The commitment is part of a multi-million pound Police Race Action Plan set up in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in America ‘to improve trust and confidence in policing among Black communities’ in the UK.
But the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) and College of Policing professional body are now under pressure to scrap the pledge amid fury at the treatment of Henry Nowak, who was handcuffed as he lay dying after his killer falsely told officers he had been the victim of racism.
In the Commons, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the pledge ‘urges police forces to reverse engineer the same arrest rates – despite the fact the offending rates are not the same – by treating different ethnic groups differently’.
He told MPs: ‘Let that sink in for a moment: an official police document actually says that people should be treated differently based on the colour of their skin.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp urged police to scrap a controversial anti-racism commitment during Tuesday’s Commons debate on the Henry Nowak case
‘The dangerous ideology of so-called anti-racism – which says people should be treated differently based on race – is wrong and should be ended. The police have allowed extreme activists to hijack their policy-making process and this is where it has led. It has no place in policing. It has no place anywhere.’
He urged Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to intervene and scrap the commitment, which he said was dangerous as well as ‘morally wrong’.
She replied: ‘It is important that the police retain the confidence of all the communities they police, and I think he will acknowledge that there is a history and a context here relating to racism and the police.
‘Whatever changes are made, it is important that nobody over-corrects or course-corrects in such a way that all of us citizens are no longer equal before the law.’
Sources close to the Home Secretary admitted the wording in the police anti-racism commitment is ‘clumsy’.
‘The NPCC is rightly reviewing the wording to ensure there is no ambiguity, so everyone is equal in the eyes of the law,’ a source said.
NPCC chairman Gavin Stephens said: ‘We are listening to legitimate concerns about how some of these commitments are worded or phrased, and where needed we can and will make changes, but this should not detract from the intent, which is to improve the quality of policing.’
The NPCC also said its Police Race Action Plan has been ‘scaled back this year to a much smaller national team’ with £387,000 budgeted for the current financial year, down from £1.3m last year.
Reform UK vowed to ban police race action plans along with Diversity Equality and Inclusion (EDI) training as part of an ‘Equal Treatment Act’ if it wins the next election.
The party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said: ‘The tragic death of Henry Nowak is a horrific example of two-tier policing in Britain. The accusation of racism was dealt with more seriously than the accusation of being stabbed.
‘This is a direct result of police initiatives like the Hampshire Police Race Action Plan which trains officers to do this. A Reform government will pass an Equal Treatment Act, which will end two-tier policing for good.’
Downing Street insisted yesterday there is ‘no such thing as two-tier policing’.
But ex Scotland Yard officer and Government adviser Rory Geoghegan said: ‘No10 should familiarise themselves with the ‘commitment to racial equity’. It specifically urges police officers to treat people differently based on the colour of their skin. It should be withdrawn.’
