From Sir Paul Condon

Sir: I am accused by Mike Bennett, chairman of the Police Federation in London, of ignoring widespread sex discrimination and harassment of the Met's 6,000 women colleagues ("Police rank and file say Met is sexist", 27 October). This allegation is totally untrue.

I recently offered the federation a full-time post within itsstructure to champion and monitor issues affecting women police officers. Much to my disappointment, the federation turned down this potential new post.

I made the offer because I am determined there should be a policy of fairness for all within this service, and I will do all I can to pursue that aim. Not only is it the right policy to pursue on moral grounds, it is very much in the best interest of our public that we should be seen to be fair to all colleagues. As I have said publicly on many occasions, how can we be seen by our public to be fair if we cannot be fair in our treatment of each other?

We have a full-time Equal Opportunities Unit, and we recently reviewed our whole policy with regard to fairness issues. We are now putting into place a series of measures to make fairness a key element of all our management decisions and to be openly fair in the way we select, appraise and promote staff.

We still have some way to go on these issues, but I believe we have made huge progress and will continue to do so.

Yours sincerely,

P. L. Condon

Commissioner

Metropolitan Police Service

London, SW1

27 October