Target practice gone wrong
by Joe Hackett, Artillery Row:
Last summer, it emerged that the RAF, desperate to hit diversity targets for new recruits, had proposed outright stopping the recruitment of white male applicants. This prompted the then head of recruitment, Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl, to resign in protest.
The story has rumbled on since then, with a succession of leaks and revelations illustrating the depths which the RAF was willing to plumb in order to meet its targets. Senior RAF personnel confirmed that recruitment was “slowed” when it became clear the service was missing its targets. Leaked emails have shown RAF staff complaining about “useless white male pilots”. It’s been reported that 31 white men have received payouts from the RAF after being disadvantaged by its recruitment policy.
When the story first broke, defence minister James Heappey was on hand to reassure us that we’re all trying to find the guy who did this. “If there is evidence of positive discrimination,” he said, “the people responsible for that will be held vigorously to account.”
Positive discrimination, of course, is technically unlawful in this country. You’re not supposed to be able to, say, set hiring quotas than discriminate for or against certain groups in order to improve your organisation’s diversity statistics. The Government’s own website says as much.
The problem is that the prohibition on positive discrimination in the Equality Act (2010) is weak and riddled with loopholes, some by omission and some explicitly written into the Act.
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