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

I am not saying this is right.

I am reflecting what I have seen, experienced and heard.

And just because it is happening doesn't mean that this is how it should be.

So you saying you feel left out or "othered" isn't surprising.

What is maybe harder is finding others who think like you and want to share and talk about it publicly.

Too many in the system are all playing the game, not because they believe it, but think this is how they will, if not get ahead, survive.

So I am sorry if my reflecting what I have seen, experienced and heard only confirms your negative experiences.

@IwantToRetire "What is maybe harder is finding others who think like you and want to share and talk about it publicly.
Too many in the system are all playing the game, not because they believe it, but think this is how they will, if not get ahead, survive"

I actually think a lot of people feel the way I do

A lot of people are sick and tired of this crap

It's got to the point where it's very difficult to say it without somebody thinking that you are a horrible racist discriminatory etc person.

Also, I think some people are just as you've said, they talk about it even in their personal life because they think that's how you are supposed to be

Quite honestly, I thought you were starting this thread in support of all of that

And I thought it was important to speak out against the things that I think are problematic. In the past I would've just ignored a thread like this. I've spoken out on a couple of threads in the last week saying how much I hate all of this.

I'm not saying the world should be run according to me 😂 but I think with so many of us feeling like this and keeping quiet it's not helping

The Equality Act allows positive discrimination where necessary and I very much doubt that Black people

positive discrimination is illegal under the Equality Act. You can encourage underrepresented groups to apply, you cannot give them advantage when they do so.

When people talk of ‘black peoples being under represented in law’ what do they use as the proportion of black people to compare it to? Given the large numbers of unqualified young men who have claimed asylum here in the last five/ten years it would not be reasonable to include them when counting new entries to the field. It would even more unreasonable to include them when looking at senior legal positions that require 30 years of legal experience. The latter should be compared to the proportion of settled black people in the uk 30 years ago.

I mean, clearly the issue is she is testing the legality of this scheme.

The UK has, thankfully, been protected by law from some of the more divisive elements of identity politics, but schemes like this which are walking along the edge are becoming more common, usually sheered by people who think that equality legislation applies to groups rather than individuals.

The question is whether this kind of scheme can ever be ok under the law, and then whether it is actually justified in this particular instance.

The fact that some people think it's in service of anti-racism doesn't mean it's actually legal.

Yes, this. Or a small demographic quickly becomes vastly over-represented.

On the RAF note, I think it was to do with recruiting fighter pilots, and the result was not having enough pilots to defend our country if needed. But hey-ho, as long as white people aren’t over-represented (in a majority white country where a large number of the more recent non-indigenous population seem to positively dislike us and our way of life) that’s all that matters!

It's really not an "interesting legal question". It's a simple one which has been addressed repeatedly. The Equality Act ss 158 and 159 enable positive discrimination. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/158 (it's a short and simple provision)
She's not actually even suing them, she's just written them a letter saying she wants to sue them.
Obviously it's all a publicity stunt and she doesn't actually want a place on the scheme. Nor tbh does she appear to have the acumen to get on it even if she were eligible.

I saw the name Sophie cocoran and concluded that this is a publicity stunt

Also, wasn't she crying because none of the traditional values tory lot fancied her or accepted her as one of them?

Which provision?

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"

This is quite common ime with these kinds of schemes. When race is the primary characteristic they are looking for, what they actually get is a lot of people who are in fact quite privileged and would have no problem getting jobs.

I suspect that the issue really is people think of a catagory "black people" and that they are statistically more likely to be low income or have some other measure that is not at the same level as "white people" as a whole. But actually, there are the same divisions in the black population as in others. Just like you can have a well educated well off white kid who will have all the things he needs to do well in employment, and his situation is nothing like some poor kid with a single parent addict mother from an estate - you can have exactly the same division among other racial groups. And honestly, it can seem pretty dumb for a charity to be spending people's money to give a leg up to someone who is already advantaged.

It's like my friend's ex - grey up as the son of two very highly successful academics from a well off family, and yet was able to take advantage throughout his career in all kinds of special schemes meant to advantage black students in his own career in academia. (My friend btw came from a neighbourhood and background where it absolutely made sense to offer some help and experience to the young people there, because they had no advantages or connections. But the oint it seems to me is how reductive it is to make it just about race.)

Quite honestly, I thought you were starting this thread in support of all of that

Funnily enough I take part in the FWR forum to discuss issues, primarily around feminism which is the focus of the forum.

And thought given the many discussion about the EA, single sex services, what is legal what isn't, that this was a parallel issue.

And it was only after having the usual tussle with not getting AI to win the battle to title the thread that I saw the other article saying it was a stunt.

I am not very up on so called influencers so hadn't realised who it was, assuming she is somebody any of us should care about, that was starting the court case.

Slightly off the topic itself, but I suspect all of us would have much better things to talk about and discuss than what so called influencers and those on twitter or reddit are saying. IMO.

As to the positive action, I do believe schemes like this could work. But as with every thing in the UK it somehow gets hijacked and never remains with its core values.

Years ago, there used to be something called Adult Education, and if not totally free only charged a token enrollment fee. It allowed many, many peope who for whatever reason hadn't finished their education, or hadn't been able to get the training or professional qualifications they wanted the opportunity to take the relevant courses. Sometimes known as evening classes. (Also created space for those who wanted to have the opportunity to do more arts type classes.)

There are any number of reasons why some people haven't been able to access the educational topic or the work training they wanted. This gave them a second chance.

I dont think schemes like the one under discussion are the same because the are designed by people who are not in that situation themselves and so immediately have influence over how it happens ie the "othering", rather than the older "evening classes" model where those participating chose to do it.

I think the Open University was meant to replace evening classes but not sure how that compares in terms of meeting a range of people's different needs.

I think it's actually pretty questionable now how many people are denied employment specifically due to ethnicity, if other elements are the same. It would unfortunately also be very difficult to come up with very clear cut numbers about such a thing. But I am with Morgan Freeman on this question, I think the evidence is that people of colour, of all kinds of ethnicity, can do very very well in most modern western democracies like the UK or US.

Where there are barriers they are more often about access to education, access to early supportive parents, and things like that. Some of which can be remedied in a fairly straightforward way (by offering good free education for example) and others where it is very difficult (compensating for parents who don't support their kids or offer a healthy home life.)

In some ways it seems to me like we've actually gone backwards for people who have barriers, for example where their parents just have no experience or connections in some highly competitive sector. I often think acting is a really good example of this, it's very open to people from differernt ethnicity but I would say less so to people who are not very well off financially, or who have connections in the industry, than it was a generation ago.

IwantToRetire
I think the Open University was meant to replace evening classes but not sure how that compares in terms of meeting a range of people's different needs.

I'm fairly sure that it was not originally intended to replace them, but to offer another way for people to have the opportunity to fill gaps in their education if they'd missed out first time round. The OU was meant at its inception to make it possible for people who couldn't take three years out of their lives for the purpose, to work for a degree, which local evening classes didn't have to do: they could be for example a year of classes once a week about the chemistry involved in cooking, but with no chemistry degree at the end of it.

Thanks - I probably got this idea because (some years ago now!) I remember some very strong campaigns to keep Evening Classes going as more and more councils said they didn't have the budget and suggested (wrongly it would seem) that there was always the OU.

Councils were and are strapped for cash, and things like evening classes are an easy saving, I guess.

This was some time ago, and I think in fact central Government(?) said if there were to be such classes they should focus on specific areas of work.

Talking about the OU, the same uni that kicked all the White people out above, also just closed all the evening classes for their degrees just before I did my disseration. They wrote to us and that was that, no help no nothing. They said that they have arranged a deal with the OU to finish off all our degrees.

When I contacted the OU, this deal did not include any of the, what would normally be in a full time degree, year 3 level credits, so anyone who had done that level credits had to redo the whole lot and then just finish off their degree by then doing the relevant OU credits to finish off. This meant that 2 years of my degree work was not only completely useless, but I'd have to pay again for the pleasure of redoing 2 more years before I could do my disseration. So I just took the degree from the original uni just minus the 'honours' bit.

Maybe that was what the BBC wanted to say.

For the record, I don't think pitting people against each other is helpful but I also think many, many people in Britain have any clue what life is really like for some people.

Common People by Pulp is still very relevant.

South African here (living in the UK and dual national).

Aware that the EA allows for some exemptions regarding race.

Am vehemently opposed to that exemption and really wish it wasn't in the EA. South Africa is an excellent example of why this shouldn't be allowed in any context based on race. There is nothing positive about discrimination based on race.

I say the above in full acknowledgement that Corcoran's motivations should be questioned.

Separately, in the last five years, a recognisable global company I worked for has their HQ in the US. They tried to force "positive" discrimination for a role I was hiring in the US and explicitly told me I could not consider a white person for the role. I refused and moved the role to the UK instead, with the support of the two UK HR recruiters who equally understood that the US policy was batshit and racist.

From the foundation's website: 10000internsfoundation.com/our-programmes/

Since 2020, the 10,000 Interns Foundation has created over 10,000 paid internships for talented, underrepresented students and graduates across the UK.
and
To be eligible you must be: Over 18, Black or of Black heritage (including mixed heritage), AND currently studying at a UK university or recently graduated from a UK university within the last three years.

Although the opening statement refers to "underrepresented students and graduates", the eligibility criteria exclude anyone who is not "Black or of Black heritage (including mixed heritage)".

It might be relevant to ask whether black people are especially underrepresented in the legal professions. According to government statistics,

Representation of Black individuals was similar for all three professions [barristers, solicitors, and Chartered Legal Executives] (3% to 4%), and was comparable to the 25-74 (4%) and 50-74 (3%) working age populations.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/diversity-of-the-judiciary-2025-statistics/diversity-of-the-judiciary-legal-professions-new-appointments-and-current-post-holders-2025-statistics--2#ethnicity-1

So, if underrepresentation is out, the defence better come up with another justification for positive action.

The same webpage mentions that:
There has been a gradual increase in the representation of ethnic minorities in all three legal professions over the last decade.
and
At 1st April 2025, for all three professions the proportion of individuals from an ethnic minority background was broadly in line with those of the 25-74 working population in England and Wales from the 2021 Census, and slightly higher than the older 50-74 working population.

So if the trend continues, it follows that white British people may soon be underrepresented in the legal professions. If that happens, will the foundation change their eligibility criteria accordingly?

I’ve seen similar for LGBT+ on the basis of under representation in the ARTS!!!!!

God yes all the time! There are numerous grants, awards, competitions, internships and even some jobs in my arts field that are only open to "underrepresented" candidates, which means LGBTQ+, ethnic minority, disabled, sometimes working-class. These groups are not all under-represented at all, especially the TQ+! (especially since anyone could easily just announce a non-binary identity and immediately massively increase their opportunities.) But people seem to not understand what under-represented means and think it just means marginalised or a minority in some way. The fact that LGBTQ+ are in fact way over-represented would be too much maths for these virtue-signalling numpties to even think about.

I saw one campaign statement that said "shockingly, only 1 in 5 books [of whatever type it was they were on about] features a non-white main character!" Well that would be over-representation then, in the UK as white people are about 82%. I don't actually mind if white, straight etc people are under-represented but at least understand what you're saying!

Good Law Project to support ‘under attack’ internship charity facing discrimination lawsuit
https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/good-law-project-support-under-attack-internship-charity-facing-discrimination-lawsuit/governance/article/1957958

I am not a lawyer either but - where does "positive action" shade into "positive discrimination"? In particular was this a paid internship? If so, and if only certain racial groups are allowed to take it up, then is that legal?

Sorry, I've just seen @hallouminatus ' post upthread. So it looks as if paid internships are legal - but maybe they've never been legally challenged before.