Ian Leahair, who has been a firefighter for 25 years, told Channel 4 News there is a “tradition of recruiting people on merit and if they can do the job, they’ll be recruited – it doesn’t matter if you’re black, female or white British”.

It comes after Ukip leader Nigel Farage appeared to endorse the view there is “positive discrimination” against white British males in the UK. Yesterday a voter told Mr Farage: “Many of my friends are unable to even get a job in the London Fire Brigade for being white and for being British.” Mr Farage replied saying he had a family friend who “left the Grenadier Guards, tried to join the police, and suffered the same problem” (see video below).

But Ian Leahair, who himself served in the Grenadier Guards before joining the London Fire Brigade, says while women and people of black and minority ethnic backgrounds are actively encouraged to apply, the process of hiring itself is entirely on merit. Mr Leahair is an active member of the Fire Brigades Union and points out the false perception may have come from the fact the London Fire Brigade had not been able to recruit firefighters at all in the last couple of years, because of cutbacks.

Channel 4 News looked at London Fire Brigade’s statistics on diversity. They show in the year 2012-13, just 6 per cent of firefighters employed by the brigade were women. The number of white male firefighters was 4,540 – in contrast, the number of black male firefighters was just 289. Only one woman of Asian background was employed as a firefighter by the Brigade in the same year.