Harriet Harman unleashes positive discrimination

Harriet Harman is about to let the spectre of positive discrimination out of the bag. The Equality Bill before parliament today gives employers the right to choose an ethnic minority candidate or female candidate over another a white male, specifically because they are an ethnic minority or female.

This is a mistake. A company should recruit on talent and that’s that. If it discirminates on grounds of race or gender it is stupid and deserves everything it gets. Positive discrimination is a sure fire way to create resentment and will inflame the basest and most unpleasent prejudices, as illustrated by the Daily Express front page today, which shouts: ‘White men face jobs ban as new law favours ethnic monorities and women’.

It’s also interesting that Equalities Minister Harman is wheeling out the accusation that it’s ingrained prejudice in business that is causing the gender pay gap. She must have forgotten the government’s own Women and Work Commission, which was quite clear that this was not the overriding problem when it came out in 2006.