Britain’s National Health Service is facing accusations of racial discrimination against white job applicants as it was reported that it deploys tactics to boost the number of ethnic minorities hired.
NHS England is actively promoting local branches to ensure that at least one black or other ethnic minority candidate make their hiring shortlists for prospective staff members, thereby artificially skewing the process against white candidates, according to London’s Daily Telegraph.
Documents obtained by the broadsheet found that the socialised healthcare system has been advocating for the use of the “Rooney Rule,” a practice adopted by the National Football League in the United States that mandates that teams consider at least one ethnic minority candidate when hiring coaches.
In a document titled “improving the selection process,” the NHS England’s East of England region told local trusts to “consider using a version of the Rooney Rule or increase the numbers of under-represented groups who are shortlisted.”
Separately, the NHS praised a hospital for only proceeding to the interview stage of the hiring process “if there is at least one BME [black and minority ethnic] candidate and one woman candidate shortlisted”.
Conservative MP and former health minister Neil O’Brien said that the NHS has been taken over by “race-based hiring policies” that result in “people are chosen based on the colour of their skin”.
“The people who put these policies in place lump together every non-white group as if they are all the same, and will favour someone from a privileged background better than someone who has overcome all kinds of obstacles, as long as they have the right skin colour.”
While it is technically illegal in the United Kingdom to engage in positive discrimination, the practice of favouring certain races over others, such as in the case of Affirmative Action, DEI-style loopholes have been used to get around this.
For instance, the 2010 Equality Act, passed under the previous Labour government of Gordon Brown, made it legal for firms to take “positive actions” to promote the hiring of ethnic minorities.
This has been used by some to justify the practice of requiring minority candidates be represented on all recruitment shortlists, as it falls short of preferential treatment in the actual hiring, while still often tipping the scales against white applicants.
The Equality Act also made a carve-out clause known as the “tie breaker”, in which a minority candidate could be given the edge to be hired if they are found to be equally qualified for the position as their white counterpart.
The report comes in the wake of a controversy surrounding the hiring process of the West Yorkshire Police, which was reported earlier this month to have enacted a temporary ban on accepting applications from white candidates to accumulate more applications from “under-represented groups” before hiring is restarted.
Last week, the head of the police force, Chief Constable John Robins, argued that “legislation should change” to legalise positive discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities over white candidates.
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