POLICE are to carry out market research to find out why so few black and Asian people want to join the service.

Senior officers have admitted that they are failing to recruit enough people from minority ethnic communities in Scotland, and pledged action yesterday to make the police service more representative.

But they have ruled out positive discrimination to redress the balance, despite pressure from senior non-white officers and campaign groups.

Only 118 police officers out of a total of 15,963 in Scotland are recorded as black or Asian.

In the Lothian and Borders force, there are 32 black or minority ethnic (BME) officers from a total of 2,853. That constitutes 1.2 per cent of the force in a region where ethnic minority groups make up 2.4 per cent of the total population.

The force is now planning to carry out market research into people’s perception of the service in an attempt to attract more BME recruits. It is hoped the research will be extended across Scotland.

Peter Thickett, the director of human resources at Lothian and Borders Police, said: "We need to find out what people think of the police service, what the perceived strengths and pitfalls are, so we can think about what we need to do to change perceptions.

"That particularly applies to the BME community where the problem is persuading people to apply. What we need is proper market research - it’s something that hasn’t been done in Scotland for a number of years.

"Once we get the results, we will be ready to take action to address the imbalance."

There are a number of myths held about the police among minority ethnic communities that need to be shattered, added Mr Thickett.

"One person said they thought there were still height and eyesight requirements, and the perception is still held that the police are poorly paid," he said. "People from some developing countries also tend to have very negative views of police in their own country and think British police behave in the same way."

Mr Thickett said: "At the moment we are going on anecdote - what we think are the objections to policing. We think we have many positives to offer but we are not getting the message across, so market research would help this."

One of Britain’s most senior minority ethnic officers called last month for Scotland’s police service to promote black and Asian candidates ahead of white colleagues.

Ali Dizaei, a chief superintendent at the Metropolitan Police in London, said positive discrimination was needed to make police forces more representative of their communities.

But Mr Thickett felt members of minority ethnic communities would not support favouritism.

"We don’t want to discriminate against anyone," he said. "People from ethnic minority communities want to be recruited on merit, not because of the colour of their skin."

Chief Inspector Andrew Cameron, of Central Scotland Police, who is responsible for recruitment policy across the country, claimed that media coverage of race relations within the service had caused "a problem" in relation to recruiting more BME officers.

"The reality is police forces in Scotland have been trying hard to get the right balance and proper reflection of communities they serve, but it’s fair to say there is still a gap," he said.

"Anything that we can do to get underneath the reasons why this is the case is something we have got to support."