The Royal Air Force chief acknowledged mistakes and oversights after claims the former chief of staff identified “around 160 cases” of discrimination against white men, Sky News reported on February 1.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, speaking before a committee of MPs on Wednesday for the first time since last year’s scandal, said it would be wrong “stretch ambitious” the goals he set to improve gender diversity in the RAF to the end.
“It caused them unbearable stress and it was an organizational mistake: when an ambitious goal becomes the goal of an individual.”– he said.
The RAF chief has publicly apologized to group captain Lizzie Nicholl for having no choice but to resign as chief of staff. Nicholl resigned because she felt it was “an illegal order” to favor women and ethnic minorities in recruiting for Air Force training courses. The resignation took place in August 2022, however the apology was only made now.
However, Wigston claimed that he did not “active discrimination” there were no white men.
Speaking at a sitting in Parliament, Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee, said he thought there would be legal action against the RAF over the matter, which he called “erase in notebook” air forces. She said the order, which the chief of staff refused to carry out, came from her superiors, noting that Air Chief Marshal Wigston was at the top of the chain.
“My question today is this: ‘Maybe the wrong person quit?’ Ellwood asked.
Air Chief Marshal Wigston said he could not discuss Nicholl’s case because the investigation had not been completed. He tried to turn the case around so that Nicholl would drop out of the protest, not wanting to follow the order he had given her. However, the parliamentarians pointed out that it was something else. Nicholl found that before he was personally ordered to select candidates, there were at least 160 cases in the Air Force in which white males were turned away in favor of ethnic minority candidates.
“She determined as I understand there were about 160 affirmative action cases and as a result she had to resign as she did not want to continue with this policy.”Ellwood said.
RAF chief admitted mistakes were made “previously”.
He said it depended on how certain recruits, based on gender and ethnicity, were admitted to airmanship courses with priority over white males, which he defined as “error” just early last year.
About his own career, the head of the Air Force said: “I make no apologies for setting an ambitious diversity target in the RAF. These are tough goals, they go beyond the desired level of ambition… One of the mistakes we found is that this ambitious goal… when it became a strategy and then translated into our business plan and then seeped into the plans of the individual recruiters. recruiting personal goals for sergeants during the year, and it was an unachievable goal that created unbearable stress for them, and it was an organizational mistake when an ambitious goal becomes an individual goal”.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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