Labour has evidently not learned from its recent troubles with the Sentencing Council over guidelines which risked undermining the very foundations of the criminal justice system. The government now has plans to create a new enforcement body to tackle ‘pay discrimination’ against ethnic minorities and disabled people.
The equalities minister, Seema Malhotra, has set up a call for evidence which will search for advice on the planned formation of an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit – a proposed quango that would work with the trade union movement to strengthen the implementation of equal pay rights. In a statement plucked straight from the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ playbook, Malhotra declared that ‘equality is a key factor in delivering long-term and sustainable growth across the UK economy.’
The timing of Labour’s announcement is puzzling to say the least. Its wranglings with the Sentencing Council, which issued recommendations Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said amounted to ‘two-tier justice’, shows that overreaching quangos have been captured by racial identity politics. These bodies also seem to view it as their right to override the concerns raised by a democratically elected UK government.
Even though the Sentencing Council eventually backed down, the entire episode should not have reached such an advanced stage. Indeed, the conduct of the quango – combined with its efforts to provide special protections for cultural and religious minorities – was deserving of nothing less than outright abolition.
The Labour government appears to be setting itself on the right track after proudly announcing that it would be scrapping the ‘world’s largest quango’ – NHS England – in the name of reducing bureaucracy, making savings, and empowering healthcare staff to deliver better care for patients. But the unholy trinity of ‘diversity, equality, and inclusion’ is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
The Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority recently – and correctly – announced that they were no longer pursuing their joint action on forcing firms to improve their diversity and inclusion policies in order to avoid placing ‘additional burdens on firms’. Considering Labour recently met with regulators to explore ways to trim red tape and spur economic growth, it is peculiar that the government is ignoring this important sea-change among independent regulators when it comes to DEI policies.
Malhotra has framed her equality agenda as an important element of the government’s supposed mission to ‘better remove barriers to ambition and success’. But the enforcement of pay-related rules based on protected characteristics such as race may do more harm than good. For some time, British firms have been the subject of mandatory gender pay gap reporting – which some have suggested has contributed to perverse outcomes. This includes a reluctance to employ women in lower-paid roles and hesitancy over appointing men applying for higher-paid positions. The worry over the creation of an enforcement body that essentially upholds mandatory pay gap reporting on the grounds of ethnicity may be hugely counter-productive in terms of both business development and social cohesion in modern Britain – potentially disincentivising the recruitment of ethnic-minority workers.
It is worth considering the following possibility. Imagine an exclusively white-British company based in a rural area. This firm wants to improve its digital acumen and cultural know-how by appointing tech-savvy, hard-working young people. If this firm hired any ethnic minorities, it would suddenly create a significant pay disparity on the grounds of ethnicity. This would make the firm look discriminatory for employing people from a range of backgrounds. There would be a huge incentive for this firm to only hire white people.
With American president Donald Trump unleashing a ‘tariff tsunami’ which has wreaked havoc across global markets and heightening the threat of a global economic recession, this is not the time for the UK government to be carrying out a DEI experiment on the British private sector.
Instead of burdening British companies and firms with additional red tape and applying needless pressure on their recruitment processes, the Labour government should provide the conditions for business to progress and thrive as part of its so-called pro-growth mission. On top of raising National Insurance on employers, creating additional costs for them through a reckless shake-up of employment rights will only slow down the UK economy even further by dampening business activity.
Labour’s obsession with DEI is both anti-business and anti-cohesion. If the government is truly serious about enabling growth, it will abandon its plans to create yet another so-called ‘anti-discrimination’ quango that risks undermining businesses. The multicultural identitarian state needs to be dismantled, not empowered.
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