Intel recruitment

MI6 airs TV ads to recruit more women and ethnic minorities

Britain's secret service will air its first recruitment advert on national TV later in a bid to encourage more women and ethnic minorities to join MI6.

The intelligence officers would help find new secret agents and check information gathered is legitimate.

The poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in Salisbury resulted in a surge of applications, officials say.

But they want to broaden their reach, and say they want people who "challenge the status quo".

The latest official figures from March 2016 showed 24.1% of senior staff and 37.8% of non-senior staff were women.

There were also no British, Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) members among the senior ranks and they accounted for just 6.8% of the non-senior staff.