asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of new recruits to the police force in the last six months were women.

About 25 per cent.

As women are very often physically unable to carry out the difficult tasks required of our police officers in protecting the public against violent crime, does not the Under-Secretary think that this relatively high percentage of new women recruits shows that there are still many police forces in this country which are desperately undermanned or, as the Minister of State says, underpersonned? Does not this mean that we should be implementing in full the Edmund-Davies report to make sure that we have more male recruits to bring our police forces up to strength?

The question shows the total confusion in the hon. Member's mind. He says that there are too many women on the one hand, but on the other he says that there are not enough men. To reduce the number of women will not increase the number of men. The proportion of women in the police service is 7·8 per cent., which does not sound an excessive amount. There is a desperate need for more male police officers, but it is nothing to do with the fact that 7·8 per cent. are women.

Is the Under-Secretary equally concerned about the number and quality of entrants into another group of crime prevention officers, namely private security—

Order. This question is about the police force. The hon. Member's question must relate to that.

In the campaign that the Home Department is running for recruitment of ethnic minorities in multi-racial areas, will my hon. Friend pay special attention to the recruitment of females from such minorities? This would be of considerable help in solving a number of problems that we face in integrating ethnic minorities into the community.

I would welcome recruitment to the police service of men and women of any minority group which would improve the strength of the service. There is no discrimination within the service. The Sex Discrimination Act was introduced to deal with the kind of prejudice and discrimination shown in the original question.