Back in the 1960s, campaigning lawyer Lord Lester devised a simple test to discover whether employers were prejudiced. He’d apply for a job under the name of Smith and then again with identical qualifications, but as Mr Singh.
That employers all those decades ago weren’t interested in the Singhs comes as no surprise. What has astonished social scientists is that more than half a century later, some UK employers remain just as biased, research shows. And there are stark differences in how white and minority ethnic young engineering professionals fare.
Britain has been a pioneer in developing anti-discrimination legislation but now falls behind most of Europe, says Dr Valentina Di Stasio, who has researched racial discrimination among employers. She found that people from Nigerian, Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds had to send 80 per cent and 90 per cent more job applications respectively than their white British peers in the UK, simply to get...