RAF faces crisis over drive for diversity

White men discriminated against in 160 cases amid push for women and ethnic minorities

THE RAF has been accused of discriminating against 160 white men in its effort to meet “aspirational diversity targets”.

Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Commons Defence select committee, told MPS the RAF’S former head of recruitment had identified the cases before she resigned in protest.

After the revelation, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, head of the RAF, was asked if he had presided over a “lack of integrity at the top”.

Defence sources suggested to The Daily Telegraph last night that Sir Mike, who wrote the 2019 Wigston review into inappropriate behaviour of troops, should be considering his position.

The allegation has emerged as the Armed Forces struggle to retain female personnel amid a sex harassment crisis.

Mr Ellwood told MPS that Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl, who quit in August last year, was placed in charge of recruiting more women and ethnic minorities into the service.

While working on the scheme, which ran from November 2020 to March 2021, Group Captain Nicholl identified “around 160 cases of positive discrimination”, Mr Ellwood said. “She ended up having to resign, not wishing to go through with this policy,” he added.

It is the first time the scale of the alleged problems caused by the RAF recruitment policy has been revealed.

Mr Ellwood told MPS prioritising the selection of ethnic minority and female pilots over better qualified white pilots to improve the RAF’S diversity profile could “materially impact on the RAF’S operational performance”.

Giving evidence to MPS for the first time on the matter, Sir Mike told MPS that while he made “no apologies for setting a challenging, aspirational goal”, the objectives were “stretching aspirational levels of ambition”.

He said: “One of the mistakes that we have identified is that that aspirational goal, which was a stretching target, when it was translated into the strategy and then translated into our business plan, the Command Plan, and then trickled down into individual recruiting officers ... that put intolerable stress on them and that was a failing of the organisation where an aspirational goal becomes an individual target.”

However, he denied discrimination had taken place and insisted standards had not slipped because of the diversity drive. He said: “I can absolutely assure this committee there was no compromise of entry standards, no impact on the standard of recruits.”

All three services have been told to improve their diversity as they are predominantly made up of white men. In response to the recent Women in the Armed Forces report, the Government pledged to ensure that women would comprise 30 per cent of the intake by 2030. The RAF went further and insisted it wanted to see the number of female recruits rise to 40 per cent by the end of the decade.

However, the Red Arrows recently faced allegations of a “toxic” culture. Two pilots from the display team were dismissed after allegations of misogyny, bullying and sexual harassment.

In October last year, the Royal Navy had to launch an investigation into claims of rape threats and sexual assault on Britain’s nuclear submarines.

The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst has also been urged to tackle a “toxic culture” of sexual assault as a charity said hundreds of servicewomen reported abuse during their training.

The Armed Forces have also faced claims that female recruits are not equipped with properly fitting kit.

A report last year found that female soldiers often had to use “ill-fitting” kit across all three services, such as rucksacks that were too big, which could also increase the risk of injury.

Data show the military has struggled to retain women, with 1,530 leaving the Armed Forces in the year to September 2022, while 1,420 joined.

The number of women who joined the military in 2021 was higher than in 2022, at 1,940.