Assistant commissioner says Scotland Yard is looking at 50-50 white and minority ethnic recruitment – banned under current law.
The increasing proportion of minority ethnic Londoners means the Met police has never been less representative.
Scotland Yard has discussed with the government a radical change in race relations law to allow positive discrimination in recruitment, as the growth of London’s ethnic minority populations makes the gap between the police ranks and those they serve wider than ever.
In a Guardian interview, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Simon Byrne said the plans the Met were examining would mean they “could only recruit, in very broad terms, a white officer if you can recruit a black or minority ethnic person at the same” time.
Byrne said current law “doesn’t allow us to be as bold as we could be”. Nine out of 10 Met officers are white, while the latest census data shows London’s population is 40% minority ethnic.
The senior officer said the “50-50” plans amounted to “positive discrimination” which would require a change in the law. Talks were still ongoing with the government at the time of the interview, conducted the day before the Woolwich terror attack, an episode that highlighted religious and racial issues in the capital.
Some police chiefs fear overly white forces, especially in urban areas, risk damaging the legitimacy of policing as they exercise the power of the state over increasingly ethnically diverse populations.
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