UK security service M15 is seeking to expand its recruiting base into the LGBT community, following other major British employers in an attempt to recruit higher numbers of gay staff.

The security service has hired LGBT rights group Stonewall to advise the domestic intelligence service on encouraging agents to be open with their sexuality and encouraging more gay candidates to apply.

Several years ago such an attempt wouldn’t have been possible. Long after homosexuality was decriminalized, gay men and women were banned from holding sensitive diplomatic or security posts.  That ban was not lifted until the early 1990s under the reasoning that gay spies could be more easily blackmailed.

MI5 director general Jonathon Evans instituted the policy, which will see the service profiled in Stonewall’s list of gay-friendly employers later in the year. The group’s efforts mirror similar efforts by British banks, many of which have hired Stonewall in an attempt to reach the many qualified applicants in the LGBT community it might otherwise have rejected.

The shift comes as MI5 is moving towards more open, public recruitment from a more traditional tapping up of graduates at prestigious schools. MI5 has needed hundreds more staff in the wake of the July 7 bombings and can no longer rely on traditional methods.

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