Local councils are running race-exclusive job support programmes for ethnic minorities using central government grants, leaving white Britons on benefits to fend for themselves in a system that claims to promote fairness.
This fresh example of identity-driven exclusion follows a clear pattern of public and private sector policies that disadvantage white applicants in hiring, training and now benefits-linked help, all justified under the banner of “positive action” and “levelling up.”
A Telegraph investigation published this week exposed how multiple local authorities are directing taxpayer money into employment programmes closed to white jobseekers.
White People BLOCKED From Accessing Job Seeker Schemes
— TaxPayers' Alliance (@the_tpa) June 16, 2026
Campaigns director @yarwoodwilliam joined @MartinDaubney on @GBNEWS to discuss how and why local authorities are engaging in two-tier politics by blocking white people from accessing job schemes. pic.twitter.com/z4wUFQXljF
In Sheffield, the Labour and Green-led city council runs a £340,000 Pathways to Work project offering “targeted employment support for ethnic minority groups.”
The report notes that the scheme, delivered through local charities, focuses on “economically inactive” minorities and draws funding from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Economic Inactivity Trailblazer plus the £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority, under possible soon to be Prime Minister Andy Burnham, has used similar grants for “culturally appropriate employability support” aimed at BAME residents in Oldham.
This includes CV workshops and mentoring sessions reserved for those groups. While the authority maintains other programmes remain open to everyone, the ring-fenced elements explicitly prioritise ethnicity.
In Scotland, Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council restricted some business growth support programmes to local black and minority ethnic entrepreneurs only.
These initiatives sit inside the broader “levelling up” agenda, where central government funnels multi-billion-pound grants to local and combined authorities.
The money is meant to tackle economic inactivity, yet in practice it is being channelled through race-based filters.
William Yarwood, Campaigns Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance stated “Taxpayers should not be funding schemes that exclude people because of their race.”
He added that “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, labelled the approach segregationist and questioned the selective focus on race while ignoring other variables that actually drive employment outcomes.
“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?” he urged.
“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,” Cuthbert prophesied.
The public sector had already come under pressure to rethink diversity policies following the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton. Bodycam footage and court evidence showed police initially treating the white victim in a manner that drew sharp criticism, while the Sikh perpetrator’s false claim of racial abuse complicated the response. That case accelerated reviews of race guidance across policing and public services.
Why default to skin colour as the targeting mechanism instead of straightforward need, postcode deprivation, age, skills gaps or family background?
White working-class communities in many former industrial areas face stubbornly high economic inactivity and poor educational outcomes too.
Treating race as the primary lens simply injects identity politics into British benefits and employment services.
This is not an isolated experiment. It sits squarely inside an established trend of public bodies using the Equality Act’s positive action provisions to tilt opportunities away from white applicants.
In April 2025, West Yorkshire Police – one of the country’s largest forces – operated a system where BAME candidates could apply year-round for constable roles while white British and Eastern European applicants were restricted to specific recruitment windows.
Internal descriptions labelled minority applicants “gold” and white applicants “bronze.” A whistleblower described how the process restricted progression opportunities for white British candidates, with ethnic minority applications advanced ahead of the general pool.
Earlier, in January 2025, Westminster City Council advertised an Executive Assistant role and openly stated it would use positive action to appoint a candidate from a “Global Majority” background where two candidates were of equal merit.
The advert made clear that white British applicants would not be favoured over non-white candidates.
A parallel controversy erupted this month when the National Audit Office was criticised for running an internship scheme closed to middle-class white men, limiting eligibility to female applicants, those of black heritage or from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The National Audit Office, which is funded by the taxpayer, said only applicants who are female, of black heritage or from lower socio-economic backgrounds could apply
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 6, 2026
?: https://t.co/z2omtzZnVX pic.twitter.com/KWE2m8fzi5
Similar patterns have appeared in other public sector recruitment and in private hiring data. Reports from previous years documented cases where managers were instructed to deprioritise white male candidates, and employment tribunals accepted arguments that wanting to hire fewer white men did not constitute unlawful discrimination.
BBC accused of discriminating against WHITE candidates https://t.co/hcSIe86D2C #humanresources #hrnews #hr pic.twitter.com/yRmDktIkCz
— HRNews (@HRNewsdesk) June 3, 2016
Source: https://t.co/zJPxWiIQ6K
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole) December 26, 2024
? Tories push for crackdown on ‘racist’ anti-white hiringhttps://t.co/TTGqpdRXRZ
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 11, 2025
Source: https://t.co/uwj9UuxW2Z
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole) February 21, 2024
RAF diversity targets discriminated against white men https://t.co/dUKotB24iz
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 30, 2023
The thread running through policing, local government jobs and now benefits-linked employment support is consistent: race is treated as a legitimate sorting category, with the white majority positioned as the group whose exclusion or deprioritisation requires the least justification.
When central government grants intended for economic revival are filtered through racial eligibility tests, the message sent to ordinary taxpayers is unmistakable.
Some citizens are deemed deserving of dedicated help on the basis of ancestry; others – regardless of their personal circumstances – are not. This is the very definition of a two-tier system.
The Equality Act was never meant to license routine racial gatekeeping in taxpayer services. Positive action was framed as a limited tool for overcoming specific, proven disadvantages. In practice it has become a bureaucratic justification for embedding identity preferences across swathes of public life.
Britain already struggles with social cohesion after years of rapid demographic change and elite-driven multiculturalism. Adding explicit race-based rationing of job help on top of that is reckless.
It fuels precisely the resentment and withdrawal of consent that critics like Alka Sehgal Cuthbert have warned about.
The alternative is straightforward. Employment and benefits support should be allocated according to individual circumstances – skills, work history, local labour market conditions, health, caring responsibilities – not membership of a favoured racial category.
Jobcentres are being remodelled on a universal basis; local add-ons should follow the same principle or lose their funding.
Taxpayers of every background contribute to the same pot. They are entitled to expect that pot is not used to tell one group of citizens they are second-class when it comes to basic help getting back into work.
The current approach does not level anyone up. It entrenches division, rewards grievance entrepreneurship and erodes the principle that public services treat citizens as individuals rather than avatars of their ancestry. That principle is worth defending before the two-tier logic spreads further.
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