Black representation charity defends discrimination claim against intern scheme

[IwantToRetire]

A charity is defending itself against a legal claim that its flagship intern programme for Black students discriminates against white applicants.
Rebecca Ajulu-Bushell, chief executive of the 10,000 Interns Foundation, told Civil Society that her charity had filed a legal defence against a suit brought by commentator Sophie Corcoran.

Corcoran, also an influencer who has appeared on GB News, took legal action against the charity and the Bar Council after claiming she was rejected from a programme for aspiring lawyers aimed at Black people.

Her suit asserts that she faced a loss of employment opportunity since she is white, and was subject to discrimination under the Equality Act

Article continues https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/black-representation-charity-defends-discrimination-claim-against-intern-scheme.html

I thought positive action was allowed up the EA?

Although I see from the Guardian who first wrote about this that they are implying its a political stunt by an influencer, GB News presenter https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/apr/29/sophie-corcoran-gb-news-sue-charity-not-offering-internships-white-people-legal-action

Sounds like one of those stunts to make you feel 'excluded' and to make the black people feel 'included'. Doesn't really work very well if you aren't all discussing it in a plenary afterwards though.

I had a look at the rules for who can apply for a civil service internship, and it's quite interesting. It's about the jobs your parents do. It isn't about what your parents earn in those jobs. So if your parent is a filing clerk on £20K a year, you don't qualify. But if your parent is a train driver on £100K a year, you do. If your parent works in a trade, you may or may not qualify - it depends on the trade. The child of a roofer doesn't qualify, for instance. It was pretty clearly biased in favour of Labour party supporters. Train drivers are well paid and in secure employment, but they're also heavily unionised, so their children qualify. People who are self-employed appear to be unpopular with the government, and their children generally don't qualify, however badly paid the parent.

Do you have a link please?🙏

No, but Google is your friend.

No plenary.

Thanks for that

I'm really not. You aren't a lawyer I realise from that post. We are talking EQUALITY legislation, not preferential treatment.

You don't seem to understand the difference between Positive Action and Positive Discrimination under the legislation.

Positive Action is lawful IF it falls within the remit of existing Equality Law. It's aim is to help those who have disadvantage in certain circumstances ( i.e evidence based) get to the same starting line for a job ( for example) as the majority group in that vocation.
After that it's up to them to prove themselves as able for the job as others.

Positive Discrimination is unlawful in England, Wales, NI and Scotland.

The Charity concerned is not a " black charity" as some are claiming. It runs initiatives to assist various groups who have disadvantage in particular areas compared to others not of that particular descriptor. There is no blanket prescription that Group A should be treated better at all times, and for all circumstances, than Group B.

This particular internship is within the law in NI, Wales, England and Scotand as the group it purports to assist is evidentially unrepresented in that area of employment.

Many decades ago, I was involved in the WISE initiative. Women Into Science and Engineering. Supported by the then Equal Opportunities Commission. To help support Women who were under represented in those particular professions. There wasn't one for Hairdressing, for example, as there wasn't a barrier to women working in that area.

A lot of men and some women, huffed "WISE wasn't fair".
What wasn't fair, was the under representation of good and able women who could not get into those areas of work as the drawbridge was pulled way up high, and they were not allowed access to compete for work on equal terms. Or Equal Pay, for that matter, when they did manage to gain employment.

Schemes like the present one, and for different groups facing disadvantage, have been around, to my memory, since the late 1970s. It's nothing new. Closing them down "as not fair" is part of a race to the bottom, along with trying to cancel sports initiatives, for instance, for cricket and football for girls.

It doesn't guarantee them a place playing for their national team, it does help hone skills and give them the experience they may not otherwise have had, and perhaps a chance to try for their local teams.

Are you saying that you want me to do the research from scratch all over again, so that you don't have to? 😄

No, I thought you were making some interesting points and I wanted to engage in a conversation about them with you. So I thought that it might be useful to read the same document that you are reading which is why I asked for a link, assuming that it would be the work of moments to retrieve it from your search history.

I found this @BusyAzureTraybake Dunno if that's the one? I can't find the criteria so far.
Internship Scheme To Get More Working Class Students Into Civil Service - GOV.UK

Thank you, and I have been involved in WISE too👋

I can't find the train driver etc criteria.
I'd be really interested to read it
A shout out to WISE sister!

A link would be useful as I did try googling and couldn’t find what you were talking about.

I’m assuming you mean the Summer internship programme where “you must be from a lower socio-economic background, as part of our commitment to improving access and opportunities for underrepresented groups. We assess socio-economic background using the measures set out by the Office for National Statistics.”

But the link they use just takes you to the standard ONS website. I can’t find anything about clerks, train drivers etc.

Although the barriers in finding information for a widening participation scheme is rather ironic in itself.

No, it doesn't give a list. I went here, https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/fast-stream/fs-summer-internship-programme/ where it mentions the ONS, but still no list.

@PinkFrogss Although the barriers in finding information for a widening participation scheme is rather ironic in itself.

Indeed.
Oh well. I can't spend all day on the ONS site. I have rhubarb to stew.

I scorched the flapjacks! That'll teach me!

I think it may be this https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/otherclassifications/thenationalstatisticssocioeconomicclassificationnssecrebasedonsoc2010

and this

www.gov.uk/government/publications/understanding-a-workforces-socio-economic-background-for-change/simplifying-how-employers-measure-socio-economic-background-an-accompanying-report-to-new-guidance#parentaloccupation

If so it’s a wonder the scheme gets any applicants I have no idea how students would figure out if they’re eligible in those very long pages of word salad. Most would quite fairly not even bother trying to figure it out.

I was going to say it’s also not very clear if it’s based on resident parent or both but that probably is buried in there….somewhere

It was months ago.

A skim read of those docs suggest that there was a review. Train driver seems to be out as a poverty indicator, but free school meals stays in. It's a range of factors I think, but still can't find a finite document.
Applications are closed now anyway.
My ambition of being the civil service nominee for the Ambassador to Washington seems eternally doomed. Ah well.

Someone else had mentioned what happened to the mixed race people

I wondered that too

I have hated these schemes since I was 25 or so and became aware of their existence. There are definitely jobs I've missed out on because they've been advertised in really stupid places on the basis that they were looking specifically for people of my ethnic origin

I like to get jobs on the basis of being the right person for the job

Someone said not to mix up EDI and CRT and I'm struggling with that - one seems to feed into the other quite a lot

I don't think I benefit from these schemes. In fact, I think there's not a lot of benefit from these schemes for anyone

One of my contacts got her organisation signed up to 10,000 black interns I think it was

At the end of it, she admitted something that could be construed as racist actually - she said "I think I have been very naive because while the guy I had on my team was excellent, it came as a surprise to me that he's from an extremely wealthy family"

I mean, what can you say? She thought she was doing the "right" thing, why wouldn't a black man be from a wealthy family? And if your primary selection criteria was that he's a black person, why would you care? You got what you wanted.

Fortunately, she has learned a lot in the last couple of years. I would say that she is very much someone who thinks that being on the left of politics makes her a good person - or at least that's what she thought a couple of years ago.

I also think she's one of these people who is pretending to be from a working class background. But she's a lot younger than me so God knows what jobs were asking for when she applied. Now they're all asking about your schooling and free school meals and your parents economic background blah blah.

I can't work out what the rationale behind anything is anymore and I fucking hate it

But I really think we should all be allowed to recruit in a way that ignores skin colour, sex, age - and that means accepting what your final selection looks like. I've worked in very female dominated places and one of them was the subject of discussion by the board who said they were worried about some kind of discrimination case

That was around 2006 - I think after that people had to quietly start hiring men because the makeup of the organisation changed, made it a lot less fun for me NGL but I always get on better with women

Businesses should just be allowed to operate without worrying about this stuff.

I don't even know what percentage of the country has my ethnic origin but it is a low percentage, so why should it even be factored into the workplace? And what kind of representation figure are they looking for? And how deep do they want to go? Do they want to tick the box of my mother's religion, my father's religion? Does My religion or lack of it come into the equation?

A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have even been brave enough to say this. Now I think people are starting to understand that I am not crazy for questioning how these things work and what their validity is

wasn't there something said about the RAF having too many white men? It's the RAF! I want the right people to defend the country -I don't give a damn what the demographics are!

It's not called 10000 Black Interns.
It's called 10000 Interns. They have different schemes including people for with disabilities. One of the schemes is for black applicants.
No one is forced to apply if they don't approve of them.

The RAF scheme was unlawful and a result of some fecking high up eejits trying to be cool dudes and not understanding the law.
There's a lot of white saviour shit about which does no good for anyone except feed the racist narrative.

Positive action is about taking specific steps to improve equality in your workplace. For example, to increase the number of disabled people in senior roles in which they are currently under-represented.
It can be used to meet a group’s particular needs, lessen a disadvantage they might experience or increase their participation in a particular activity.

You must be able to show that positive action is an appropriate way for your organisation to achieve one of these aims and the steps you are taking have been carefully thought through.

Using positive action at work is voluntary. However, public sector employers should consider using positive action to help them comply with their Public Sector Equality Duty.

Employers who use positive action measures may find it brings benefits to their organisation, including a wider pool of talented, skilled and experienced people from which to recruit and a better understanding of the needs of a more diverse range of customers.

Six examples of positive action

• placing job adverts to target particular groups, to increase the number of applicants from that group
• including statements in job adverts to encourage applications from under-represented groups, such as ‘we welcome female applicants’
• offering training or internships to help certain groups get opportunities or progress at work
• offering shadowing or mentoring to groups with particular needs
• hosting an open day specifically for under-represented groups to encourage them to get into a particular field
• favouring the job candidate from an under-represented group, where two candidates are ‘as qualified as’ each other

Please see chapter 12 of our employer code of practice for more information on positive action.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/business/employers-what-positive-action-workplace

I am not crazy for questioning how these things work and what their validity is

I think that many schemes that start with good intentions, often go adrift because of the dividing line between positive action and positive discrimination. And / or those running them not having the understanding or training to run one.

And so there is no shared understanding. Just because someone who is Black has money doesn't mean they wont face racist discrimination when applying for jobs or an internship. So not sure what that has to do with it. Or maybe it was the trainer's own racism in assuming everyone from a BME community is poor.

And as to there being too many white men in the RAF or whatever, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that in the UK (just look at politics!) there are far too many over educated white men who have had the benefit of a good education because of their race and sex and class, who then suffer the dillusion that because they are "educated" they can think.

And of course end up only employing other white men like themselves.

Because the other side of this is the peerception that is given by an organisation in a country that is multicultural, if everyone who works there is white. ^^

Sometime ago when I was part of a women's group that was funded and only had 3 employees, but the funding officer criticised the organisation for being (and I quote) "agressively white".

But on the other hand when I saw a facebook post from a women's group congratulating itself for having had a sucessful meeting with MPs, this phrase did pop into my mind as it showed around twenty white women. (The group claims to represent women's issues in the UK)

^^ This is one of the reasons for employers asking job applicants to complete a monitoring form as annonymous statistics. It is meant to be used to show that your recruitment process has received applications that reflect the area you are recruiting in. So an inner city area would probably have a different number of communities living there than for instance a rural one.

@IwantToRetire I have heard everything you are saying over the years

It just makes me feel more and more left out. You've got to wonder if that's actually the aim.

like there's all these groups that are considered to be "other" and needs to be treated in a way that achieves some mysterious goal of "equality".