Equality chiefs have been accused of wasting £35,000 of taxpayers’ money on research into ethnic minority gays in Scotland which only found six such people to speak to.
Even then, none of the research interviews took place with those individuals but only with equality organisations.
The study was funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Researchers have been handed further funding to continue their work.
The work was done by gay rights group Equality Network, together with Black and Ethnic Minority Infrastructure in Scotland (BEMIS).
They have produced a 236-page report on the subject called Everyone In. It will be launched later this month but is currently available from the websites of Equality Network and BEMIS.
The Scottish Government refused to rule out further funding for the research team. A spokesman told the Scottish Daily Mail: “They have highlighted a gap in research and we now have to explore how best to address it.”
The communities spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives Jamie McGrigor MSP said: “This is another example of work being generated for its own sake and, when public sector funds are extremely tight, that is unacceptable.”
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “This is an absolutey scandalous waste of money and an insult to the hard-working taxpayers who have forked out for this pointless initiative.”
Last month the Equality and Human Rights Commission came under fire after a staffing blunder costing nearly £1million led to the National Audit Office refusing to sign off its accounts.
In June it was reported that the Commission had funded Britain’s leading gay lobby group, Stonewall, to produce a report on how to deal with religious employees in the workplace.
Last year the Commission gave a humanist group which wants to sideline religion from public life £35,000 to lecture on the place of faith and belief in equality and human rights.