Charities that fail to ensure equal opportunities should lose their charitable status.
London – UK – 11 June 2004
A Catholic charity established to help the homeless should be free to discriminate against homeless Muslims and gays, according to the government. It would be wrong to restrain charities from discriminating against people because of their faith or sexuality. A commitment to equal opportunities should not be a condition of charitable status.
Surprised and shocked? I was. After all, the government is constantly proclaiming its commitment to equality.
Fiona Mactaggart MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office, is in charge of the new draft Charities Bill. It stipulates that to qualify as a charity an organisation must operate for the “public benefit”.
I wrote to Mactaggart suggesting this public benefit test should include non-discrimination in employment and service provision. After all, how can charities provide a genuine public benefit if they discriminate against sections of the public?
My letter argued: “Charitable status is a privilege, not a right. With this privilege comes certain responsibilities, one of which is the responsibility to conform to minimum standards of socially accepted public good and benefit. These minimum standards should now be extended to include a responsibility to pursue equal opportunities policies”
The reasonableness of this modest proposal makes it difficult to understand why the government is so fiercely resistant to non-discrimination by charities.
We live in a multicultural democracy, where there is a social consensus in favour of equal opportunities. I suspect most people would agree it is offensive and unacceptable to privilege charities with perks, such as tax breaks, if they deny equality.
How can discrimination be compatible with providing a public benefit? Inequality corrodes social cohesion and harmony, disadvantaging individuals and disrespecting whole communities.
In certain circumstances, of course, some degree of discrimination may be legitimate, in order to overcome disadvantage and social exclusion. These limited exemptions could be modelled on the comparable clauses in the sex and race discrimination laws, where positive discrimination in favour of women and black people is permitted if it is a “genuine occupational qualification” or if is it necessary to remedy discrimination and disadvantage.
A charity established to counsel black victims of racist attacks may, for example, be best able to meet this objective by employing only black counsellors and by restricting its counselling services to black victims. But this charity should not be allowed to deny employment to black counsellors who happen to be HIV-positive, nor should it be permitted to refuse counselling to black race hate victims who are gay.
Apart from these limited exceptions, in my view the law should not condone inequality by granting charitable status to organisations that discriminate. Only organisations guaranteeing comprehensive equal opportunities to all sections of society should be eligible for the social seal of approval offered by the awarding of charitable status.
The Home Office disagrees. It has written to me stating:
“Public benefit is judged on the results of the work that an organisation does to meet the needs of its service-users or beneficiaries. The policies and practices a charity adopts in organising itself to meet those needs are not among the criteria for judging public benefit, and we do not believe they should be”.
This sounds suspiciously like the ends justifying the means. The government seems to be saying that if an organisation is doing good works that are of public benefit, it doesn’t matter how these good works are achieved or whether they involve discrimination against sections of the community. But how can a charity do good works if it denies equal treatment to its employees and service users? Discrimination and good works are surely mutually contradictory?
Take the example of a friendly society charity involved in the running of hospitals for the needy. The Home Office stance suggests that if the hospital provides a public benefit overall, it would not matter if it incidentally refused treatment to lesbians or transgender people.
The government also argues there is no need to make equal opportunities a condition of charitable status as charities are already covered, like all other organisations, by existing equal opportunities legislation. Charity staff and clients therefore have adequate redress against discrimination.
Unbelievable nonsense. As the government well knows, anti-discrimination legislation is not comprehensive. Partial and piecemeal, it protects primarily against unequal treatment based on race, gender and disability. Employment discrimination on the grounds of faith and sexual orientation was recently outlawed, and this will soon be extended to cover age discrimination in the workplace.
But even after this expansion of job protection is completed, lesbians and gay men, the elderly, political minorities and many others will continue to have no protection against discrimination in the provision of goods and services. It is, therefore, legal by default to deny them housing and insurance. It is also lawful to refuse them service in shops, restaurants and hotels – and, of course, to exclude them from charity-run services, such as home help and hospice care.
Moreover, there is not a shred of protection in law against discrimination based on a person’s marital status, social background, language or accent, physical appearance, medical condition or genetic inheritance. If a charity victimised a person on any of these grounds – either in employment or in service provision – the victim would have no legal recourse.
To help remedy these legislative failings, equality of opportunity ought to be an essential requirement of all charities, in the same way it is now a component of the modus operandi of all responsible, civic-minded organisations.
Non-discrimination is an ethical imperative in a multicultural society. Charities cannot act for the public good and provide a public benefit if they do not ensure equal opportunities for their employees and the recipients of their services. The draft Charities Bill should make non-discrimination a condition of charitable status. Over to you, Fiona Mactaggart.
A slightly edited version of this article was published on the Guardian website, Society section, 4 June 2004