Member A Smiles Tribunal Member J Torbet Mr O Al Manasrah v Hmr Group Holdings Limited — 2020

The claimant, who identified as Middle Eastern Arabic and Muslim, applied for an Administrative Officer role with HMRC in Dundee. He passed earlier stages but did not pass the interview, scoring 4, 2 and 2 against three behaviours where a score of 4 was required for each. He alleged direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of race and religion, relying in part on interruptions during the interview, the interviewers' scoring, wider statistics about ethnic minority representation, and failures in the respondent's recruitment and complaint processes.

The Tribunal found there was just enough evidence for a prima facie case of direct discrimination. Relevant matters included that one interviewer had not completed the required 2019 diversity and inclusion training, the other interviewer had not scored independently as required, contemporaneous interview notes were not before the Tribunal, and the later complaint investigation was limited. However, the Tribunal accepted the respondent's explanation that the claimant did not pass because his answers to the second and third behaviour questions did not sufficiently address the questions asked. It found that a white British and non-Muslim comparator giving the same answers would have been treated in the same way.

On indirect discrimination, the Tribunal assumed that asking questions and interrupting or redirecting the claimant's answers were provisions, criteria or practices applied to him. It found that the claimant had not established that those PCPs put people sharing his race or religion at a particular disadvantage, and said the purpose of the interventions was to assist candidates. It also found that, if disadvantage had been established, the respondent had shown a legitimate aim of helping as many candidates as reasonably possible to pass, and that the prompts or interventions were proportionate. The claim was dismissed, although the Tribunal recorded concerns about failures to follow the respondent's procedure and the handling of the discrimination complaint.