Labour scraps review into 'woke culture' in the Armed Forces

Ministers person scrapped a Tory-initiated reappraisal into the 'woke culture' successful the Armed Forces, contempt claims that diverseness policies person contributed to a superior shortage of trained officers.

Grant Shapps, who commissioned the reappraisal past twelvemonth erstwhile helium was defence secretary, condemned Labour for blocking moves to 'stop woke ideology from seeping into our Armed Forces similar rust weakening steel'.

Last month, the Daily Mail revealed that diversity-hiring practices had contributed to a 30 per cent shortfall successful pilots astatine the ranks of formation lieutenant and squadron person successful the RAF, aft an effort to discriminate against achromatic antheral applicants backfired.

Candidates who had been overlooked successful these attempts to prioritise the recruitment of women and taste minorities are present being urged to reapply for grooming arsenic the RAF frantically tries to capable cockpits with combat-ready crew.

But Labour's defence curate Alistair Carns has admitted successful a parliamentary reply that staffing connected the reappraisal into equality, diverseness and inclusion policies successful the Armed Forces had been 'paused'.

When launching the review, Mr Shapps said 'the drumbeat of those who despise Britain, her arrogant past and the civilization of her large people, is failing the Armed Services and the British public'.

Last nighttime helium said: 'Sadly, this proves what we feared – this authorities is drawn to indulging successful societal engineering alternatively than ensuring our forces are battle-ready.

'Scrapping this reappraisal betrays the integrity of our Armed Forces by sidelining the lone criterion that should ever substance – excellence.' 

Tory defence spokesperson James Cartlidge said: 'These rules person led to aviator shortages, and we were taking enactment to halt them.

He added: 'It is shocking, but not surprising, that this isn't a precedence for a authorities that rejected our program for higher defence spending past July due to the fact that it would person meant cutting the civilian work and upsetting their national paymasters.'

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: 'We privation the broadest endowment and skills successful our Armed Forces and we are committed to recruiting and retaining the champion talent, immoderate their background.'