Discrimination law breach civil not criminal matter
BREACHING proposed anti-discrimination legislation will not result in criminal charges.
Instead, breaches would be civil offences under the proposals released by Employment & Social Security.
Deputy Emilie Yerby, a member of committee, said: ‘We want to be clear from the start that offences will not be criminal, but civil.
‘We want to encourage people and we don’t see how having a criminal record would help that.’
The draft states that it is the person on whom the discrimination is being inflicted who would need to raise the issue.
Plans state that the first step would be for the individual to raise the issue with their employer or service provider and that free advice would be available before or after completing this step.
If the issue was still not resolved after this, a complaint would need to be issued to the employment and discrimination tribunal, which would deal with the breach of legislation and come to a decision.
‘The tribunal should be a last resort,’ said Deputy Michelle Le Clerc, the president of ESS.
She said implementation of an equality and rights organisation would be a way of ensuring that anyone affected by discrimination would feel able to confront an employer or service provider not meeting legislation requirements.
‘I think that’s where the equal rights organisation comes in. ERO will be able to collect data on whether people are being brave enough to put their head over the parapet or not.’
She said this would highlight whether reluctance to report an act of discrimination was an issue.
There are some instances when other laws already in place will override discrimination legislation.
The Population Management Law takes into account whether or not a person is from Guernsey or overseas and this would come under discrimination of race, named as one of the qualifying grounds of discrimination. However, in this case it would be deemed acceptable to distinguish between the two.
