Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure the police represent the communities they serve in (a) rural and (b) other areas.

We need a modern diverse police force to police modern diverse communities. The police must understand communities to effectively police them.

The Government has reformed policing to ensure that there is a sector-led approach to making improvements, including in the area of recruitment and representation. The Government’s reforms will allow for faster progress on equality and Diversity. For example, new entry routes to policing are proving attractive and increasing the diversity of the police workforce. Police and Crime Commissioners and the College of Policing as the professional body for policing in England and Wales are playing a key role in ensuring improvements in forces, and for the first time we have published force by force diversity statistics which will allow the public to directly compare the diversity of their police force with the population it serves.