The British Army wants to relax security checks for recruits from overseas to boost diversity and inclusion, The Telegraph can reveal.
Britain’s armed forces have consistently failed to hit recruitment targets and are looking overseas to boost ethnic minority representation, which currently stands at 14 per cent of the regular army.
A document leaked to this paper, titled The British Army’s Race Action Plan, notes that the Army “struggles to attract talent from ethnic minority backgrounds into the officer corps”.
Published in March 2023 and understood to be the latest guidance, it outlines a series of “actions” to boost representation and describes
security clearance vetting as being “the primary barrier to non-UK personnel gaining a commission in the Army”.