Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that first-language Welsh speakers are not unfairly disadvantaged in the (a) process and (b) written tests for police entry.

Decisions about police recruitment, including how recruitment and selection processes are run, are a matter for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners and are therefore managed locally by forces. This is done within a national application, assessment and selection framework, in line with national guidance maintained by the College of Policing.

There is currently no formal obligation for the College of Policing to prepare a statutory language scheme in respect of the Welsh language. Nevertheless, the College published its first Welsh Language Scheme in 2021, which sets out the College’s commitment to supporting Welsh forces.

In the scheme, the College has committed to work together with Welsh forces’ recruitment departments to offer the candidate a bilingual recruitment journey. To date, the College has produced the national application form, and all candidate information and guidance for the recruitment process in Welsh.

The College remains committed to exploring further options to delivering elements of the assessment phase of the end-to-end process in Welsh to support candidates who have Welsh as their first language.