Harriet Harman unleashes positive discrimination

George Orwell

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

Tiberius

Whoever christened this woman Harridan decerves the soundbite of the year award.

Her take on the insurance industry is enough to make the cat laugh. A service which is based on the assessment of risk is to be told not to discriminate against the elderly (presumably under threat of being transported away in a cattle train that runs on time).

So, are we to see the end of Britain's insurance industry, or is Harridan just howling at the moon?

Sam

I am no fan of affirmative action. But if my understanding of what the Bill does is correct, it will only allow employers to choose a woman or a person from ethnic minority for a job when they are *equal* to another candidate, not to receruit a less qualified person - a significant difference.

Jack R

The Conservatives need to make clear their philosophically principled and practical opposition to Labour's social engineering in the guise of Harman's 'Equality and Human Rights Commission'.

Labour's campaign for NEGATIVE DISCRIMINATION against the equal rights of white people to employment, and especially, it seems, given Harman's gender bias, the negative discrimination against the employment rights of white men, reinforces the the real prejudices of Labour.

Tom

As a bloke I worked in what I considered a sexist environment for years in terms of pay and promotions. I seemed to miss out on all the promotions because I wasn't part of the girly gangs in the predominantly female offices I worked in.

Stuff it, I thought, I'll go freelance and do my own thing. Now I earn much more than before and don't lose out from not networking in the ladies' room. Nothing would ever, ever induce me to going back to a permanent job again.

Stuff Harriet Harperson.

Bean Counter

Sam - you're right, but this will rapidly descend into lengthy debates about what constitutes 'equality'.

Is a Physics A-level worth more than a French A-level? Is a 2:1 from Cambridge worth more than a First from UCL? Is a candidate with 6 years' experience in three jobs equal to one with 6 years' experience in one job? Is Badminton equal to Socialising as an extra-curricular activity?

I would urge the class of '08 to train as employment lawyers - the future is paved with gold.

Ted Tedford

Further to Sam's post, this sounds like more badly-drafted gesture politics. What chance of a situation in which all candidates are 'equal'? Equal according to what? In practice it will be almost a wholly subjective call. Every applicant is an accumulation of different experiences and qualifications: for example, you can't argue objectively that a 2.1 is 'equal' to ten years' experience. It's meaningless.

This is just a way of entrenching a different - that is to say "progressive" and therefore "better" - set of prejudices, and conceivably of retrospectively justifying those prejudices before a tribunal. "They were all good candidates, so I went with the one

a. with the best sob-story."

b. with the best ar5e."

c. most likely to take me to a tribunal."

d. I was at school with."

And who keeps spectres in bags?

Ann

Err, no, Sam, it is not. It is impossible to prove absolute equality, for one thing.
And in addition, it is still compledtely discriminatory and racist, which imo is in direct breach of EU human rights legislation.
Is a Jew with slightly dark skin an ethnic minority person? This is straight out of the Third Reich.
I suspect this will already have lost them many thousands of votes, therefore I am cheering it on. What a bunch of sickening fascists.

dave, surrey

As if boys coming up through school don't have enough crap to deal with, they are now going to be told that, come some future job interview, if they're on equal footing with a woman or ethnic minority, they won't get the job. That'll inspire them!

bob

She is a very stupid woman.

As stupid as Brown and his "British jobs for British workers".

As a lawyer one would have thought she would know that this is illegal under European law but as I said, she is a very stupid person.

Chris Gilmour

Hang on, is that 40% pay gap thing when you're comparing part time women to full time men, which is just a wee bit flawed.

john miller

Hahaha "British jobs for British workers"

NuLab have lied for so long and so often they can't keep up can they?

These people are so stupid. They blithely talk about concepts that are deeply flawed as though they are natural rules of the universe that only they have just discovered. There is no such thing as positive discrimination, except in the eyes of the person creating the law. Presumably, if Brown hadn't been lying when he uttered his racist remarks above, then he would see positive discrimination as being against Johnny Foreigner. Harridan I would guess, would see it as being exactly the opposite.

David

What is even better - they have really not understood the implications of what they are doing.

Either the law destroys businesses like Saga (insurance etc for the over 50s), Diamond (car insurance for women, etc) or is full of loopholes (join my under 50s club for free, now buy our members-only insurance.).

The Today interview this morning implied with no evidence that insurers are discriminating for non-actuarial reasons. I suspect people have little idea how rapidly risks and costs start to rise once you become frail. NHS spending per year for 75+ year olds can easily be 10x that of the middle aged. The elderly fall, are vulnerable to infection, etc. The alternative will be to require underwriting check-ups for everyone, adding huge cost and complexity to the process.

Linking public purchasing to metrics of pay differentials is fantastically discriminatory against small businesses (which therefore is then probably illegal under EU law). E.g. you are single personal highly valued expert consultant; you hire an Pa/receptionist on say 10-20% of your rate - if they happen to be male and you are female or vice-versa there is a huge gap. And if you are allowed to band employs they you simply have to select your banding appropriately to avoid pay differentials altogether.

Etc.. etc..

You can tell this stuff comes from people who (as always) seem to have no idea how anyone outside the HR departments of public sector employers work.

mart

This is the usual confusion between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

You can't hope to guarantee equality of outcome; there are too many variables in the equation.

You can hope to approach equality of opportunity, by providing high quality and quantity of education, and regulations saying that race, sex, etc. are not to be used as reasons to prefer one candidate over another.

As dave says above, this is a very bad message to be sending to boys in our society. Why should white boys and men be discriminated against? What do they have to apologise for?

Seriously, we should not allow the government and the media (and that includes the Spectator!) to get away with sweetening this with the euphemism "positive discrimination" or the even more-Orwellian "affirmative action".

Equality means equality. No discrimination: positive, negative, male, female, anything. Only ability and relevant experience should be the subject of interest at job interviews.

biggestaspidistra

Yes she is stupid.

We do live with a blanket of positive discrimination for ex Cambridge, was at school with, knows my family, is my family and its difficult to know how to get rid of that and the incompetence it has foisted on the British public over the years. More discrimination does not seem to be the answer.
More transparency perhaps?

bob

Remember the story of Abigail Howarth?

In is a fact that the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Polish (white non English) are considered ethnic minorities.

So really she is discriminating against Englishmen.

As if finding a wife isn't difficult enough without being unemployabe!

Ian

The Labour party has been trialling positive discrimination for some years which is how we ended up with Harman, Morris, Kelly, Jowell, Hewitt, Hodge etc etc in government. Not a great advert, is it?

Sam

Ann, Ted, Bean Counter - but surely the difficulties you raise - of finding it hard to ensure absolute equality - hold at the moment with regard to saying whether one candidate is better? If a woman goes to an employment tribunal and claims she didn't get the job because she's a woman, the tribunal has to decide based on a combination of qualifications, experience etc whether she was the "best" candidate or not. Sure, its tricky - but the situation does already exist in employment law.

Ann - you say this is in breach of human rights legislation. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer - but I suspect neither are you, and we should see what government lawyers think when they draft this. And whilst people are of course perfectly entitled to think this is wrong, claiming that it is akin to Nazism is, imo, a litle bit strong...

Simon Orr

I suggest Ms. Harman reads 'Economic Facts and Fallacies' by Thomas Sowell. He shows that (in American) when all lifestyle CHOICE differences (e.g. marriage, children) between genders are eliminated, women earn MORE than men.

Kay Tie

Notice how the odious Harman trotted out the Guardianista statistic that women in PART-TIME employment are paid 40% less than men in FULL-TIME employment. "Mr President, we cannot allow a pay gap!"

Why does she not compare women and men with the same experience and qualifications in equivalent jobs? For the simple reason that there is no pay gap: the pay differences are explained by (for example) reduced experience from child-rearing career breaks.

Paul B

Forget what the bill proposes and whether its right or wrong. By its very existence it is yet another burden for the wealth creating side of the community to try to shoulder. Yet another law they could fall foul of and be shoved in front of a kangaroo (stet) employment court and harangued by noisy Guardianista Pretty Polly types. I just know it will have the opposite effect to what it intends and will make it harder for women to find work, if there are any jobs left for anyone by the time the Brown Bunch have finished legislating them to death. For gods sake, Kill it quick and save us all a lot of pain

Darren

Well this is just brilliant. I'm white, male and autistic, the autism section of me already posses major problems for me in securing work and now they're going to hit me with banning me because I'm a white male too. I notice she doesn't say anything about providing favouritism over disabled people. Looks like Gordon Brown and the whole Labour party could be getting their P45's at the next election.

Trafalgar

Harman clearly has never run a company in her life. I am capable of deciding who I wish to employ and - believe me - I don't need advice from the government in that regard.

It is actually damn-near impossible for two candidates to have exactly the same CV/ability - except perhaps for both Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown - who are equally incapable and foolish.

davidc

do the hr depts of public sector employers (or private sector employers come to that)work ?

Sam

Ted, Bean counter - you're right that defining what "equal" means may be tricky. But within existing employment law, we expect people to be able to define "better" - if a woman takes a company to an employment tribunal for discrimination, the tribunal has to use a combination of age, experience, qualifications etc to decide. So tricky maybe, but an issue that is dealt with within existing employment law.

Ann - you and others claim this is illegal under ECHR. I don't know - I'm not a lawyer. But I suspect neither are you, so why don't we make wait and see what the govt lawyers think when they're drafting it? And whilst of course people may disagree with the thrust of these proposals, comparing them to the Third Reich and N*ziism is, in my opinion, a little strong...

sam

Please ignore my second post!

Tim Carpenter

For every positive discrimination you get a resulting negative discrimination. HH is introducing more bad law that appears to do only one thing well: create work for lawyers.

The responsibilities of an employee to hire a certain sort of person should be to their employer, not the State or the law.

Tim Carpenter
Libertarian Party
www.lpuk.org

David

Paul B - it isn't supposed to work, it is a pointless act of political symbolism.

What I want to know is: is this Gordon's idea or is Harriet making a Balls-like leadership bid.

Ted Tedford

Sam: I'm no lawyer either, and you're correct that it's always a struggle to find the 'right' candidate. What I suspect is that, in most cases, employers plump for the person whose face 'fits'. That should be their prerogative: after all, it is they who have to work with the people they employ. And if they've done so 'unfairly' it can be tested according to current equality laws. (Good luck proving it, of course.)

I'm probably as sceptical as you of the Express's hysterical tone, but this new legislation would appear to enshrine a *right* in law to make a decision on the basis of sex or race; and would appear to offer no redress if you feel you were excluded on the grounds of being white or male.

As I said in my first post, this merely trades one lot of prejudices for other ones, which Ms Harman no doubt feels are more 'appropriate'. This is more pointless tinkering dressed up as 'progressive' policy.

Frank Pulley

Has anyone ever noticed that Harriet Harperson, Tessa 'the Godmother' Jowell and Smudger the Fudger Smith appear to be triplets; are they cloning cows now at the Labour Party HQ? If so they had better make them milch cows, given the state of the finances of NuLab and the fact that the deals with the Casino Industry (aka 'friends of ours') seem to be coming unstuck. However the Goodfellas never give up, so watch this space. No doubt they have some flexible friends at Tory Party HQ too.

David Lindsay

"The Conservatives need to make clear their philosophically principled and practical opposition to Labour's social engineering in the guise of Harman's 'Equality and Human Rights Commission'."

And if they had any, Jack R, I'm sure they would.

I didn't hear Woman's Hour this morning, but after Harman's fawning "interview on Today, there was nothing about this on Jeremy Vine (despite an hour on other aspects of this Bill, including an interview with Harman), nor evn anything on Martha Kearney's World At One. I wonder why not?

It is women who physically give birth, and on whom small children are most dependent. Get over it. In egalitarian terms, the "pay gap" does not exist. What Harman is seeking is not equality, but special privilege.

Wadi Amin

Another of Orwell's nuggets: "At 50, everyone has the face they deserve".
I wouldn't go telling them that now though - not in front of witnesses anyway.

TGF UKIP

"White men face jobs ban as new law favours ethnic minorities and women" and while Michael Millar in best London journalist fashion sniffily says this "will inflame the basest and most unpleasant prejudices" the headline will reflect the reaction of at least 90% of provincial white males.

I heartily concur with and applaud the analysis of most of the comments above but do none of you Cameron Tories expressing such indignation not realize the irony of all this?

For all Harridan has done is to propose codifying what is best Cameron practice. Am I being unfair to Dave? Well let me remind you:

1) The "A"List - No use Dave of Surrey's lads studying hard with the aim of becoming a Tory MP - sorry Dave of Surrey that's reserved for women, ethnic minorities or gays.

2) Should Dave of Surrey's lad sneak into the Commons via some bolshie provincial Conservative Association, he will have precious little chance of ever getting into a Cameron Cabinet -"At least a third of my Cabinet to be women" says Dave Cameron (what a ghastly image - at least six other Caroline Spelmans)

3) The gerrymandering of MEP selection by John Maples and the rest of Cameron Central Office. First default position - reselction of sitting europhile MEP, second default position - selection of women.

Whatever happened to meritocracy, a core conservative principle? Cameron is what happened and Harperson is doing no more than legislate what Cameron's Tories already practice.

Perry, not at all impressed by Mz. HaHaperson

On the FACE of it, a measure with some merits – if you, like a good PROGRESSIVE person have endless hours, in a well paid, comfy seated, nicely pensioned, dare we say ‘job’ (sic)? (say, as a ‘facilitator in ‘diversity’ or some such, or manager of Bin Collection in Local Government).

But, being a cynical bas*ard, I suspect it is merely Nooo-Lie-Bore, scraping the bottom of the rotten old barrel, with the scraper Harperson, trying to pick up and secure a few more desperately needed voters.

Mind you, I could be wrong.

mart

Hmm.

The quote below is from this BBC news story.

"She said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they wanted to - or vice versa."

Can someone explain to me what is new about this? If the candidates are equal in every way (how likely is that, by the way?) then of course the employer can decide arbitrarily between them. By any definition of 'equality' there is nothing of substance to choose between them. So presumably in this theoretical (and unrealistic) scenario, tossing a coin would be acceptable too.

Chuck Unsworth

Harman is extremely dangerous - not just because she is malicious, but more because she is so stupid.

She spendes her time announcing policies which she hopes will make her popular with various sections of society. But she completely fails to understand how many others will be alienated by her actions.

Paul B

David, point taken. If you are right and you probably are, then that makes it doubly worse, adding gesture legislation to statute books, purely for political gain. Now Im not in my first flush of youth (Circa 59) and I do not consider myself naive, but this truly stinks. Pass me the sickbag.

rory ritchie

Miss Harman is a fool. As an employer, to be competitive, you need the most suitable people regardless of race or gender. Her gender discrimination will cause more problems for businesses that are already finding the going tough, Not to mention the feelings of injustice that are likely to sour working relations between affected individuals.
You would think with their current poor support in the public’s eyes Labor would not want to antagonize over 50 percent of the voters of this country,…. you’re going to lose votes over this farce chaps….ill say that again since this government doesn’t seem to listen to good old fashioned sense…you’re going to lose votes chaps… Gordon put her in charge of the car pool in Westminster or something…. Frankly I don’t think her value stretches past that.

Marin

What will then be the fate of people of mixed race? Will the interview panel use a colour chart before making an appointment? Sadly, this reminds me of stories I used to read in the 70's about the apartheid regime in the old South Africa. I think of myself as white but today, after listening to the news and looking into the mirror I started wondering...

ella

THE FOLLOWING QUOTE BY HER IS THE DAFTEST AND MOST SEXIST THING I HAVE HEARD IN A WHILE

"Yet listen to this figure - if you are a woman working part-time you get 40 per cent less per hour on average than a man working full-time.

So what does she want? PART time women to get the same as FULL time working men?

discrimination happens to men and women but not as she states it. if women were being paid for the exact same amount of work then why the hell would anyone hire men?????????????????????????? simple because the women who get paid less dont do as much as the men and women who do more.

and theres nothing wrong with that if men or women choose to work part time or take breaks etc.

and what about the fact that over NINETY percent of work related deaths are male, or is that not sexist since it happens to men

JimBob

The worry I have with this is that it will be hard for anyone to reverse it, because of imbeciles like Harman who inevitably will start bleating about 'sexism'

talkjack

Sounds like Harman really wants to impose the tools of FEMALE SUPREMACY in the job market, but is pretending to be implementing FEMALE EQUALITY. The new rules are defenitely unfair, and do not create a level playing field for unemployed white men to find work.

... Talkjack