Controversial: Britain’s biggest police force is to become the first public body to adopt a policy that gives priority for top jobs to black people and women.
Britain’s biggest police force is to become the first public body to adopt a policy that gives priority for top jobs to black people and women.
The Metropolitan Police will recruit senior officers and promote civilian staff from minority groups in ‘tie-break’ situations where they are just as qualified as white or male candidates.
Scotland Yard’s diversity board has warned that the ‘positive action’ policy, made legal by equality laws last year, will be controversial.
The move could trigger lawsuits by job applicants who lose out and is likely to raise concerns that successful candidates were chosen to fill quotas rather than on merit. But a meeting chaired by Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe took the decision to use positive action after it was given Government advice.
Minutes of the policy forum meeting on July 11 state: ‘The Forum were supportive of using a legal provision that could potentially deliver a more diverse workforce.
‘It accepted the Diversity Board’s caution but were confident that Legal Services could guide on the few occasions this provision would be used.’
Recent figures show that although one in ten of the Met’s 32,000 officers come from ethnic minorities, there are just two black and Asian men in the highest rank.
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