A former justice secretary has defended the reforms his government introduced to tackle discrimination within policing – but has said it may now be time for a “recalibration”.

Alex Chalk has also warned people can accidentally fall into a “trap out of an abundance of wanting to do the right thing”.

Speaking to Sky News about the fall-out from the Nowak case, the ex-cabinet minister is asked if anti-discrimination policies within the poilice have gone too far. 

He said: “Good work has been done and we in government did some important stuff. The race disparity audit, which did things like saying, ‘well, hang on, if you’ve got white defendants and you’ve got black defendants and Asian defendants, what are the outcomes?’

“And we had a mantra which said explain or change. In other words, if there’s a reason for the discrepancy, then… that’s okay. But if there is no good reason for it, you’re going to have to change. 

“Now, the thing that has potentially gone wrong is the analysis trap, which assumes that all disparity automatically means discrimination. Now, that isn’t necessarily the case.”

Chalk added: “What we have got to do as a nation is not fall into the analysis trap out of an abundance of wanting to do the right thing… to end up drawing false conclusions. 

“I think there may be an element of that in what we’re seeing at the moment. So I think we do need to potentially have a recalibration.”

Asked if he thinks there is a particular issue with the police, Chalk replied that “if you provide clear guidance, police officers will follow it and they’ll want to follow it and do their duty”.

But he added: “The concern here is that I think the police have been given muddled and unclear guidance… They want to do the right thing, but they’re sometimes confused about what the right thing is.”