CRE chief backs recruiter with unlawful no whites policy

The head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is under fire and stands accused of breaking the Race Relations Act in advising a recruitment firm that takes on only non-white recruits.
According to Personnel Today, Trevor Phillips is on the advisory board of Rare Recruitment, a company that places graduates, but only if they are "visibly from a non-white background".

The board also includes other high profile race relations campaigners such as Sandra Kerr, national director of Race for Opportunity, and Anne Watts, a member of the steering group for the proposed Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

Following the investigation by Personnel Today, the company pulled its website on Friday and now claims its services are open to everyone, although specialising in ethnic minority candidates.

The Race Relations Act (1976) clearly states that it is illegal to discriminate against someone due to the colour of their skin. This includes attempts to make up a shortfall in a particular ethnic group in the workplace through positive discrimination. Section 14 of the Act says it is unlawful for an employment agency to discriminate against a person "by refusing or deliberately omitting to provide any of its services".

Raphael Mokades, managing director of Rare Recruitment, insisted that the company was only practising positive action, which is legal under the Act. But Naomi Feinstein, partner at Lovells law firm, said that positive action only applied to the training of staff and refusing white applicants was "definitely positive discrimination".

"Positive action is quite tightly defined - it relates to the provision of training where there is no one of [a certain] racial group employed doing certain work and there only will be if employers offer that training," she said.

A CRE spokeswoman said: "The commission is always mindful of the need for projects such as this to be in accordance with the law, and that is exactly why an advisory board with a range of expertise is necessary in order to ensure such work is taken forward appropriately."

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