Race and Recruitment from a Uniformed Services' Perspective: The Scottish Dimension

In recent times there has been much debate about the publicity surrounding the low level of ethnic minority representation in the uniformed services. Indeed, the issue has become so important that increasing ethnic minority representation across the public services had become an important government policy objective under the direction of the former Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In response to this, representatives from a number of the uniformed services in Scotland took the initiative of forming a committee to investigate the principal forces behind the current low uptake by ethnic minorities of vacancies in the Scottish uniformed sector. They decided to adopt a wide range of policy measures aimed at redressing the current imbalance in the number of minorities recruited. This paper analyses the progress made to date by the services comprising the committee, and their attempts to overcome obstacles. The paper demonstrates that while some services such as the armed forces and the police have made significant advancements in strengthening equality of opportunity in their recruitment process, it is also clear that there remain a number of key barriers, both intrinsic and extrinsic, which threaten to stifle progress on this issue.