GCHQ spying suffering for shortage of ethnic staff

ANTI-terrorism efforts at GCHQ - Britain's secret eavesdropping centre - are being undermined by failing to recruit enough ethnic minority staff, according to a report.

The leaked review found that black and Asian intelligence officers complained of a racist culture at the complex near Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire.

It also said that GCHQ had only a "very small pool" of black and Asian staff among its 5,000 workers - while all of the agency's senior staff were white.

The Capability Review was authorised by the head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, and published in January this year, it was reported.

Much of the agency's work involves monitoring calls and e-mails from terror suspects, but a lack of officers with specialist knowledge of languages like Urdu and Arabic was found to be harming efforts to spot codes and cultural nuances in intercepted conversations.

"It is critical to have a diverse staff group who are able to profile and recognise certain behaviour patterns and communications," the document said.

The report recommends better engagement with ethnic minority communities in order to boost recruitment and improve the image of the organisation, adding: "This is critical to good national security intelligence."

Several dozen ethnic minority intelligence officers were interviewed for the review, and among the complaints recorded was: "I wasn't born here and although I have been security cleared, I am constantly challenged about my loyalty to Britain by my colleagues."

In a statement, the service said: "GCHQ has long recognised that strict nationality and residency requirements for staff, and the specialist nature of our work, have made it challenging to develop a workforce which represents the diversity of the UK population.

"We have sought to address this through a national recruitment campaign which targeted Black and Minority Ethnic communities as well as measures within the organisation."