Britain's highest-ranking police officer has admitted shouting at an Asian commander who is suing the force for race discrimination.

Today Sir Ian Blair became the first Metropolitan police commissioner to testify at an employment tribunal when he appeared as a witness in the case of Commander Shabir Hussain.

Commander Hussain has accused Sir Ian of "fostering a golden circle of favoured sons and daughters", all of them white, who were chosen for promotion ahead of him.

Today Sir Ian denied this and spoke about his record on championing diversity. He insisted he had been broadly supportive of Commander Hussain's career, but revealed he raised his voice with the officer in a meeting about the Met's major command control programme - known as C3i - in 2006.

Sir Ian said: "I very rarely show anger in meetings but I am pretty sure I did raise my voice with Shabir at the end of the meeting.

"C3i was, at that stage, the largest project the Met had ever undertaken with a lifetime budget of many billions. I had been the senior responsible officer for the project from 2000 ... and probably had more in-depth knowledge of that programme that any other single part of my job.

"What I recall is Shabir producing a budgetary problem, which I did say that I was not interested in someone just bringing a new problem to my table. I wanted a solution.

"I think Shabir persisted and I probably was pretty brusque. It was unusual for me to be brusque enough to feel that I ought to apologise in an email to a more junior officer, but I did the next day. As far as I can recall the problem identified by Shabir did not materialise."

Commander Hussain, 45, has claimed he was rejected an "unprecedented" four times for promotion to deputy assistant commissioner while Sir Ian's "golden circle" succeeded after two attempts at most.

Sir Ian said: "I entirely refute the suggestion and I believe the Metropolitan Police Service has a proud record of being a meritocracy."

At the start of his evidence, Sir Ian read a lengthy statement refuting the allegations. He said: "I cannot imagine wishing to damage the prospect of any minority candidate: on the contrary, I have made clear my wish to increase the representation of ethnic minorities in all management and leadership positions. I have championed issues of diversity throughout my career as a senior police officer."

He pointed out that he had set up a Diversity Directorate at the Met and had "referred repeatedly to my belief that we have to make the Met look like London".

He added later: "The heart of the argument is that commander is a very senior rank. Only 200 or 300 people in a service of 130,000 people make it. Beyond that the numbers get smaller. The difficulty which lies at the heart of this is an expectation of promotion."

Commander Hussain is suing the Metropolitan police and Metropolitan Police Authority. The tribunal, held in Stratford, continues.

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