Met has 64 race advisers

The Metropolitan Police is accused of an "unjustifiable" waste of money today after revealing that it employs 64 race relations advisers at its training college in Hendon.

The proliferation of "diversity trainers" hired by the college dwarfs even the numbers employed by some of London's socalled loony Left councils during the Eighties.

The advisers have been hired to help the Met carry out the recommendations of the Macpherson report into the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry, which claimed to have found evidence of "institutional racism" within the force.

Drawn from a wide range of ethnic minorities, they teach racial awareness training to all new recruits at the college.

The Met was unable last night to disclose how much each one was paid, but they form part of a £2.6 million "diversity training directorate" which is supposed to help the force deliver a "non-discriminatory" service.

A spokesman said: "We have 64 racial advisers. They are employed on an ad hoc basis helping to provide community race relations training. They are recruited from ethnic minority backgrounds and have particular knowledge of their own communities." It was condemned today by one of London's leading politicians as an "unjustifiable" waste of money that could be spent on front-line policing.

Simon Milton, leader of Westminster council, said: "This just shows an obsession with political correctness. With crime levels running as they are at present, I simply don't see how these numbers can be justified."

Mr Milton said he did not dispute the need for racial awareness training, but said the sheer number of advisers showed the Met was engaged in too much "self-flagellation" over race issues.

It puts the force on a par with the former Left-wing administration at Brent council, which had 47 race advisers in 1987. Details of the numbers of race advisers employed by the Met were discovered by Westminster councillors during their on-going campaign to get more police on the streets in the West End.

Tory-run Westminster claims the lack of front-line officers is leading to growing crime and disorder in central London, while the recent spate of carjackings and mobile phone thefts across the city has shown how thinly police are stretched capital-wide.

The Met has 26,500 officers - and Mayor Ken Livingstone says he can afford to recruit just an extra 2,000. However, he stresses that London actually needs 40,000 police officers within the next five years if the Met is to defeat the rising tide of crime in the capital.

Mr Milton now plans to raise the matter in a speech about London's current crime problems, which he will make to the Local Government Association Conference in tomorrow.

He added: "The Macpherson report was an important milestone in policing. But there has been a price - the diversion of massive amounts of management time, energy and resource into prolonged introspection, self- flagellation and review rather than in responding to Londoner's more pressing concerns of rising crime, over-stretched resources and public alarm."