Too few minority staff work at GCHQ — report

London: A shortage of ethnic minority staff with key language skills is hampering the intelligence services' ability to eavesdrop on terrorist conversations, according to a leaked Whitehall report.

The study, produced by a Whitehall race adviser, warns that black and Asian officers working at the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham feel they are the subject of racial discrimination within the 5,500-strong organisation.

The 28-page report, The Representation of Black and Minority Ethnic People, was commissioned last year after concerns raised in a public document, GCHQ's Capability Review. The inquiry was authorised by the head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Most of the agency's work involves intercepting telephone calls and emails between terrorist suspects for MI5, and MI6 and a lack of officers with specialist knowledge of languages, such as Arabic or Urdu, was said to be a problem.

"It is ... critical to have a diverse staff group who are able to profile and recognise certain behaviour patterns and communications," the report says. "There is a very small pool of black and minority ethnic employees within the total workforce ... specific concerns have been raised by both management and staff around the language team. This area of work is unusually diverse within the organisation."

The policy of local community recruitment should be expanded from Cheltenham to areas such as Birmingham "which has more visible diversity", the report recommends.