Taypayers 'taken for fools' as report details how DEI policing costs smash £631m in just six years

The bombshell report has exposed just how much of your money is being spent on diversity - rather than keeping streets safe

The bombshell report has exposed just how much of your money is being spent on diversity - rather than keeping streets safe

Taxpayers have been “taken for fools”, critics have said after it was revealed that Diversity, Equality and Inclusion activities have cost police £631million since 2020.

A new report from Policy Exchange has highlighted the extent to which taxpayers' money has been spent on DEI rather than keeping UK streets safe.

The £631million figure is comprised of £431million spent on training police forces across the UK on equality, diversity and inclusion.

A further £177million is splurged on internal posts with a diversity, equality and inclusion component, and £23million on external training and consultancy.

Anna Stricklands, researcher at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, told GB News: “Police chiefs have taken taxpayers for fools by pouring hundreds of millions into EDI bureaucracy while victims wait for crimes to be solved.

“Every hour spent on ideological training and equality box-ticking is time not spent tackling burglary, shoplifting, knife crime and violence against women and girls.

“The Home Secretary should shut down this woke waste and get police forces back to the basic job of catching criminals.”

The report details that since the murder of George Floyd in the US in 2020, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing published a national “Police Race Action Plan,” with 73 per cent of the UK police forces implementing their own versions.

Eighty-seven per cent of forces make an “anti-racist” commitment or contain other “anti-racist” objectives or activities within their plans, reducing the ability of frontline operational police officers to be impartial investigators.

Fifty-eight per cent of forces generally frame their plan in the context of policing’s history rather than a contemporary focus, thus failing to focus on today’s crime-fighting priorities.

Those 24 forces often use a framework of “institutional racism” or seek to eliminate “disproportionality” or ”disparity,” which the report states limits the ability to police “without fear or favour.”

David Spencer, a former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector and Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime and Justice and author of the report, said: “Policy Exchange today reveals the astonishing cost of the police’s DEI obsession – at least £631million over the last six years.

“Police forces have sought to entrench the radical ideology of ‘anti-racism’ into British policing. In doing so some police chiefs have set policing against its own foundational principle – to act ‘without fear or favour’.

“This controversial policy-making was driven not by the elected Government of the day nor by Parliament; but was developed by police chiefs behind closed doors.

“The result is more than half a billion pounds of public money diverted away from the fight against crime. This is quite simply wrong.

“The changes necessary are so substantial that the Home Secretary must be involved – legislating where necessary.

“It is a modern-day tragedy that many of our Chief Constables simply cannot be trusted to resolve this alone.

"It’s time to restore the principle of ‘equality before the law’ in policing. Nothing less than the fundamental legitimacy of British policing is at stake.”

The report has called for the Home Secretary to clarify the role of the NPCC and the College of Policing in relation to policy-making functions, which should be strictly limited to matters of operational policing only.

The Policy Exchange report concluded that "The National Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing should withdraw the national 'Police Race Action Plan'.

"Chief Constables should follow suit with all local variants.

"The ideological concept of 'anti-racism' alongside any sense that policing should strive to obtain 'equality of outcome,' should be removed from operational policing and police policy-making in its entirety.

"This is in line with our proposal to legislate for a 'Police Impartiality Act'".