The Metropolitan Police has been praised for its attempts to improve the force's relationship with people of different racial groups.

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) said the Met's new race equality scheme was an excellent example of the Commission and the police working together.

In 1999 the Macpherson Report into the investigation of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence found the force guilty of "institutional racism".

The new scheme addresses issues such as public access to information and services, complaints, recruitment and ethnic monitoring.

'Working partnership'

Scotland Yard's first race equality scheme comes as a result of the Amended Race Relations Act, which came into force in April last year as a direct result of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

Director of the CRE Clifford Stewart said: "It is clearly an excellent example of working in partnership, with both the CRE and the Metropolitan Police Service listening to each other."

Black A-level student Stephen Lawrence was stabbed and fatally wounded when he and his friend Duwayne Brooks were attacked by a gang of white youths in Eltham, south east London, in April 1993.

No one has yet been convicted for his murder.