Employment Discrimination in UK Law

In the latter two, men and women or black and white, as the case may be, are opposite sides of the same coin. Treating women more favourably than men discriminates against men. The 1995 Act, however, does not regard the differences between disabled people and others as irrelevant. It expects reasonable adjustments to be made to cater for the special needs of disabled people. It necessarily entails an element of more favourable treatment.

In the present case the Court of Appeal were in my view right to approve these two decisions and to classify the pension provisions as a continuing act lasting throughout the period of employment and so governed by subsection (7)( b). The matter can be further tested by taking the case of an employer who before the Act was passed paid lower wages to his coloured employees than to his white employees.

The bare facts of a difference in status and a difference in treatment only indicate a possibility of discrimination. They are not, without more, sufficient material from which a tribunal “could conclude” that, on the balance of probabilities, the respondent had committed an unlawful act of discrimination.

If he is not a reasonable employer he might well have treated another employee in just the same unsatisfactory way as he treated the complainant in which case he would not have treated the complainant "less favourably" for the purposes of the Act of 1976. The fact that, for the purposes of the law of unfair dismissal, an employer has acted unreasonably casts no light whatsoever on the question whether he has treated the employee "less favourably" for the purposes of the Act of 1976.

The first stage requires the complainant to prove facts from which the ET could, apart from the section, conclude in the absence of an adequate explanation that the respondent has committed, or is to be treated as having committed, the unlawful act of discrimination against the complainant.

Direct discrimination expressly requires a causal link between the less favourable treatment and the protected characteristic. It is dealing with hidden barriers which are not easy to anticipate or to spot.

Save in obvious cases, answering the crucial question will call for some consideration of the mental processes of the alleged discriminator. Treatment, favourable or unfavourable, is a consequence which follows from a decision. Direct evidence of a decision to discriminate on racial grounds will seldom be forthcoming. Usually the grounds of the decision will have to be deduced, or inferred, from the surrounding circumstances.