Welcome to our latest Coffee Break in which we look at the latest legal and practical developments impacting employers
This week has seen extensive media coverage of a new report "Speaking Up" by the Sutton Trust (a foundation which improves social mobility in the UK through evidence-based programmes, research and policy advocacy) looking at accents and social mobility. The report states that "how people speak is an extremely important part of how they are perceived. Accent is key to how someone is viewed"; it finds that that a quarter of employees have been mocked, criticised or singled out at work because of their accent.
"Accent" is not itself a protected characteristic for the purposes of the Equality Act, but as the report points out "accent bias often becomes a proxy for discrimination against characteristics protected under the Equality Act" including "gender, race, age sexuality and many others".
For the purposes of the Equality Act, race includes ethnicity or national origins and this may provide some recourse for an individual with, for example, a Scottish accent who is not recruited on that basis. However, those individuals whose accent is not attributable to their ethnic or national origins will be unable to do likewise; this would include those with accents associated with industrial cities in England, such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, despite the fact that these were among the...
Supreme Court has directed all States to probe motor vehicle insurance claims after it was found that fraudulent methods are being employed to cheat insurance firms. Make Us Your Preferred Sourc...