Race discrimination U-turn

The government has been forced to climb down on its plans for new race relations legislation following a stream of criticisms from the Commission for Racial Equality, campaigners and black and Asian MPs. It

has now accepted that public authorities should be legally obliged not to discriminate indirectly in how they provide services. Under the government's previous proposals (see January 2000 Labour

Research) authorities would have only been legally obliged to avoid direct discrimination. This (as the Macpherson enquiry found) fails to deal with the nature of discrimination faced in the UK today, which is much more often rooted in systematic practices which have an unfair effect on black people.