A quarter of all Government departments have no black or Asian people in top jobs, says a national race watchdog.

The Commission for Racial Equality called on Whitehall to raise its target for having ethnic minority employees in 3.2% of senior civil servant positions by 2005.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Privy Council, Scottish Office and National Assembly for Wales have no ethnic minority staff at head of unit level or above.

The best performer was the Department for International Development with 8.3% of senior blacks and Asians, and it also came top when comparing senior ethnic minorities as a proportion of those employed in all roles.

"The upper echelons of the civil service remain out of reach for most ethnic minority civil servants," said chairman Trevor Phillips.

"We need to question whether the targets set by Whitehall - of 3.2% for 2005 - raised the bar sufficiently."

The overall average of ethnic minority employees across the 20 departments was 9.7% and an average of 2.8% for senior staff.

But the table showed there were 12 departments with fewer than 2%.

Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart said:"We are taking action to tackle the fact that we haven't done as well as we would have liked to do."