Author Archives: Stephen Tall

An update to yesterday’s story, Indy: the arms lobbyist and the Lib Dem peer, via BBC.co.uk:

An adviser to a peer is to lose his Parliamentary security pass after it emerged he also worked for a lobbying company with several defence clients. Robin Ashby’s role with Baroness Harris could be “open to misinterpretation”, the Liberal Democrats have conceded.

His name appears on a newly-published register of the staff who are employed by members of the House of Lords. But he insisted he had been “entirely honourable, straightforward and open” and had not lobbied defence ministers.

Mr Ashby is the managing partner

…

The Government’s new Equalities Bill hit the headlines today – primarily for its legalisation of ‘positive discrimination’ where employers are able to employ two equally able candidates. Lib Dem Equalities spokeswoman Lynne Featherstone has put forward her views on her blog.

… the media have made great hay with the bit which will allow an employer who at interview has several equally qualified applicants – give the job to the one they feel fills a gap in the make up of their workforce. So – for example – if there was under-representation of male teachers in a primary school – and a woman and man both were equally qualified to get the job – the employer could decide to give the job to the man to improve the under-represented groups representation – without being sued. That’s the point. Previously it was against the law.

This is the bit that (in garbled and misleading form) grabbed the media attention, but the media have pretty much ignored the really good bit – that at the eleventh hour the Government included tackling age discrimination both in extending the equality duty on the public sector but also applying it to the provision of goods and services. Hurrah!

You can read the full posting here.

And for those of you who want Lynne’s views in more Parliamentary language, as transcribed by Hansard, here you go:

That Labour scraped home by just 9 votes in today’s 42 days detention without trial vote is thanks to the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP leader Peter Robinson claims their stance was about principle, and nothing to do with any deals they may have been offered by the Government.

Well, maybe… though they’ve not convinced the Lib Dems’ Chris Huhne: “I think it is very much a hollow victory for the government – and at what cost, it sounds like lots of promises have been made – it is pork-barrel politics of the worst kind. I …