Britain’s MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service, will allow the children of migrants and foreign nationals to serve as spies for the first time as part of a new diversity drive.
The service is currently pushing to recruit 800 new staff by 2021 and has launched an advertising campaign aimed at groups including women and black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) people.
The initiative is MI6’s largest expansion drive since the Cold War, and ends 100 years of baring the children of foreigners from applying to the secret and foreign espionage agency.
“I want people who would have never have thought about joining MI6 to think about joining MI6,” said MI6 chief Alex Younger.
He told ITV News it was important they were able to attract good candidates from minority groups who previously might not have considered applying.
“The principal underlying capability that we have is our people. We have to sustain that situation and we have to recruit more,” he said.
“It is about having the widest possible choice of the best talent in the country. I want people who would have never have thought about joining MI6 to think about joining MI6.”
A new advert, reportedly voiced by a black man and featuring an ethnic minority mother, is due to be aired on Channel 4. A voiceover says: “We are intelligence officers but we don’t do what you think.
“It is not keeping your cool in the shark tank, it is picking up the silent cues that matter – understanding others, helping them see things differently.
“If that sounds familiar, it’s because you do it every day. MI6 – secretly we are just like you.”
MI6’s head of recruitment said the idea of the advert was “to play on the Bond image but to explain very clearly that this was not James Bond”.
Continuing: “In many respects, the people we are recruiting have sets of skills that are common to many people in the population. MI6 can take advantage of this Bond image and then turn it on its head.”