Lynne Featherstone will fight for her nameless CV proposal to return now that it has been withdrawn from the Equality Bill.
The Liberal Democrat equality spokeswoman told Personnel Today she will put forward her case for making job applications anonymous once more to government, and said that initial findings from a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ‘bogus CV’ exercise that offered evidence to suggest that some employers discriminated by name when recruiting backed her case.
Back in May, the MP for Hornsey and Wood Green called for the Equality Bill to incorporate a rule that made job applications anonymous. This was rubbished by HR directors and subsequently withdrawn from the Bill.
Earlier this week it came to light that the DWP had sent 3,000 bogus CVs to employers to test if organisations discriminated against applicants with foreign-sounding names over British-sounding names. The government said initial findings suggested that discrimination had indeed taken place.
Featherstone now plans to re-enter the proposal at the Bill’s report stage, which is expected to be later this month.
Featherstone said: “I was convinced that this [anonymous applications] should be put into practice and was relieved when I heard the DWP was doing the work to try and prove this theory. The initial DWP findings have shown significant evidence.”
The idea that such a change in law would create more ‘red tape’ for employers in the recruitment process was rubbished by the MP.
“I don’t see this creating any more work for employers – it is simply just shortlisting with a number, not a name,” she added.
The full results of the DWP exercise, which saw around 3,000 bogus applications sent out to employers advertising real jobs, are yet to be published.
