Timothy Sigworth – The Daily Telegraph via Yahoo.com June 16, 2026

White jobseekers are being shut out of taxpayer-funded employment schemes.

A range of employment support programmes offered by local authorities to benefit claimants are open only to ethnic minorities, The Telegraph can reveal.

Critics have described the schemes, which are funded by the taxpayer through multi-billion-pound grants to local government, as an example of “two-tier” Britain.

The public sector has come under pressure to rethink diversity policies following the murder of Henry Nowak. Police handcuffed Mr Nowak following the attack while his Sikh killer was treated as a victim, having falsely claimed he had been racially abused.

In Sheffield, the Labour and Green-led city council offers “targeted employment support for ethnic minority groups” as part of its pathways-to-work programme.

The £340,000 project is operated by local charities and aims to help find jobs for “economically inactive” minorities. But it is part-funded by the “Economic Inactivity Trailblazer” run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and the £2.6bn UK Shared Prosperity Fund provided by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

The funds are given to local and combined authorities to spend on “levelling up” projects.

Grants were also directed to Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester combined authority, where they were spent on projects such as providing “culturally appropriate employability support” – including CV workshops and mentoring – for “BAME” (black and minority ethnic) people in Oldham.

A spokesman for the combined authority said its employment schemes in Greater Manchester are open to people of any ethnicity.

In Scotland, only local black and minority ethnic entrepreneurs were invited to apply for some business growth support programmes by Labour-run North Lanarkshire council.

William Yarwood, campaigns director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said taxpayers’ money should not be spent on the “two-tier” initiatives.

“Taxpayers should not be funding schemes that exclude people because of their race,” he said. “Race-based eligibility smacks of identity politics and a two-tier system, which undermines public confidence in the system.

“Ministers should end these discriminatory programmes and ensure taxpayer-funded support is open to all jobseekers who need it.”

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don’t Divide Us, described the schemes as “segregationist”, adding: “Have they looked at age, locality, educational background, language proficiency and other relevant variables before proceeding with yet another divisive, race-based, segregationist plan for social in-cohesion?

“If and when there is civil disobedience, it will be in no small part due to the patronising stupidity of leaders who think this is a good plan.”

The DWP has previously been involved in schemes exclusively for non-white jobseekers, including “mentoring circles”, and the “Moving on Up initiative” in London that was open only to black men.

The department previously said it provided “bespoke programmes” to help “ethnic minority claimants to move into employment”, and that its equality objectives committed it to “tackling employment gap inequalities for ethnic minority jobseekers”.

The schemes are legal under equalities law and are designed to address an unemployment rate currently running at 8.8 per cent among ethnic minorities compared with 4.3 per cent among white people.

But the revelations follow a series of other controversies about diversity policies following the sentencing of Mr Nowak’s killer, Vickrum Digwa, and police chiefs are reviewing race guidance which suggests that ethnic minorities should be treated differently from white people.

The National Audit Office has been criticised for blocking middle-class white men from applying to an internship open only to applicants who are female, of black heritage or from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Greater Manchester combined authority said it had “many employment and skills programmes” which “support people from a wide range of backgrounds into work”.

“Nobody who is eligible is ‘excluded’ on the grounds of ethnicity,” a spokesman said.

A spokesman for North Lanarkshire council said its programme “ran alongside other funded projects supporting female entrepreneurs and the local social enterprise network” that were open to people of all ethnicities.

“North Lanarkshire council promotes an inclusive and open approach to participation in its business support programmes and initiatives,” the spokesman said.

A spokesman for the DWP said: “Every penny of taxpayer money we spend on employment support is focused on one thing – getting people back to work and growing the economy.

“Local authorities know their communities and sometimes decide to offer local programmes targeted at groups with above-average levels of unemployment, alongside their wider support, which must be available to all.

“We are transforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new service across Britain, available to all – regardless of their ethnicity or barriers to work – alongside our £3.5bn investment in employment support for sick or disabled people and £2.5bn for the biggest youth employment reforms in a generation.”

MHCLG and Sheffield city council were approached for comment.

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