Lynne Featherstone is of course right and both of you are wrong. Just thought I’d point that out

Also, Lee’s blog isn’t accepting comments so here’s what I posted:

He says: if the bill will only allow employers to select an under-represented person out of equal pools of talent then the legislation is worthless as it is currently perfectly legal to select whoever you want out of an equal pool of talent.

No, because you can still get sued for it. She explains here:

letting the employers choose is exactly what the law would do. It doesn’t force them to choose on grounds of balance of workforce – but it lets them if that’s what they wish to do. Unlike the current law, which makes that ground of choice illegal.

Its small semantics, and for some reason this has been blown up to into “white men banned from work” by the Express. We really should avoid feeding into that silly narrative

It isn’t accepting comments? Could you email me with the problem you’re having, something seems to have changed without me touching it recently and it concerns me.

I would love, however, for you to point out where in employment law it tells us that an employer cannot make a choice between two equal candidates? Is the employer supposed to slam their fists in to the table when they manage to find two candidates both ideal because they’ll have to scrap the employment process and start over, seemingly banning one or the other from running again because otherwise the outcome is likely to be the same?

Lee, as you probably know, an employer cannot (in general) lawfully select from two otherwise equal candidates on the grounds of ethnicity or gender. Supporters of these proposals would like employers to be able to do so lawfully…

Well what can they select on then? Are you honestly trying to tell me that an employer doesn’t have the option of choosing between two equal candidates in front of them without breaking the law?

In general, not on the grounds of ethnicity, gender, disability, faith, age, or sexuality.

Or let me put it anoher way – if you want to avoid hiring a woman because she wears a headscarf and you think that will interfere with her attempts to style hair – now you can legally do so!

Yes, well that’s what I thought. You can’t say “I’m not employing you because you’re black” that is discrimination, right? However this law will allow legitimately for a business to say “I’m not employing you because you’re black, I’m employing them instead because they’re partially sighted and and I don’t have enough of them in my workforce”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that companies will still get taken to court if people feel that they have lost out solely on something like faith, age gender etc, but this bill just gives those people one less thing to argue on. By allowing “positive action” you’re also opening the door for discrimination that could be argued as positive action…as some have said, one persons discrimination is another persons positive discrimination, you can’t have a loser without a winner in this situation.

All of which is pretty irrelevant anyway because any employer that has an iota of intelligence would, surely in the situation of equal candidates, simply say that they employed who they thought would integrate better with the current work force…if they have to even give a reason other than “sorry you didn’t quite make it this time” at all!

“Or let me put it anoher way – if you want to avoid hiring a woman because she wears a headscarf and you think that will interfere with her attempts to style hair – now you can legally do so!”

I’m not up on this case, but as far as I was aware this woman wasn’t one of an equal set of candidates, she was someone that wanted a job and got told she didn’t fit the right image. That’s a whole separate issue from the equality bill that solely needs to be focused on allowing employers reasonable grounds for refusing to hire someone based on the job. Let me know if I’m wrong, as with all of this I’m aware I’m not 100% informed.

Or let me put it anoher way – if you want to avoid hiring a woman because she wears a headscarf and you think that will interfere with her attempts to style hair – now you can legally do so!

I doubt it, going by what has been said about the proposals so far, unless you feel Muslims are over-represented in your workforce.

But “indirect indiscrimination” not only seems a bit of an ass, it can also be easily worked around, especially in that particular case.

Expect the draft bill in November 2008.

You can’t say “I’m not employing you because you’re black” that is discrimination, right? However this law will allow legitimately for a business to say “I’m not employing you because you’re black, I’m employing them instead because they’re partially sighted and and I don’t have enough of them in my workforce”

Note that we do not have the draft legislation. However, it looks from the proposals that our employer could now lawfully say:

Dear John,
I’m sorry to inform you that you were not selected for the position of Sales Manager. This is because you identify yourself as black and I believe that blacks are over-represented in my workforce – we have eight whites and two blacks but the proportion of blacks in this locale is less than 1 in 10. I have therefore selected someone of equal merit but someone who identifies himself as white. I believe this complies with the Single Equality Act 2008. Yours etc,

Legalisation of discrimination.

Lee I think your article on this was spot on – we don’t need legislation, we need to (a) recognise the real issues (ie let’s not compare part-time to full-time pay), and improve motivations across the board.

That’s a perfect example (Dear John) of what I was trying to get at with my article ukliberty, cheers.