§ Mr. JannerTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether he has instituted an ethnic and a sex monitoring exercise, respectively, in his Department, in compliance with the code of the Commission for Racial Equality and of the Equal Opportunities Commission, respectively; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. LeeI fully accept the need for employers to monitor the sex and ethnic origin of both their work force and job applicants, and the Department of Employment group has taken a firm lead in this respect.
The Department has been monitoring the effectiveness of its equal opportunity policies for women since 1 July 1985. Monitoring covers all the areas of personnel practice which the Equal Opportunities Commission's code of practice suggests should be monitored.
In common with other departments, the Department of Employment group has carried out a programme of surveys to find out the ethnic origin of staff. This was completed early in 1987. With a database thus established, the Department has begun monitoring recruitment and access to training as well as the ethnic composition of its staff, and is now considering how to extend ethnic monitoring to other areas of personnel practice such as promotion.