ABSTRACT
Section 16, now repealed, of the RRA 1976 provided that a constable was an employee, whilst s 32 provides that ‘Anything done by a person in course of his employment shall be treated ... as done by his employer as well’. In Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police v Liversidge,158 the Court of Appeal held that ss 16 and 32 combined did not make the Chief Constable, as employer, vicariously or constructively liable for discrimination by one police officer to another. Ironically, the court was influenced by concurrent passing of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which expressly remedied this problem. For the Court of Appeal, the new Act was evidence that Parliament had not intended the old definition to cover such situations. Of course, for those police officers complaining of racial discrimination or harassment from colleagues, there is now a remedy.159 More recently, the Sex Discrimination Act has been amended in the same way.160 There will also be a remedy under the Sexual Orientation, or Religion or Belief, Regulations 2003.161
Section 17(2)(a) of the SDA 1975 permits discrimination between men and women police officers ‘as to requirements, relating to height, uniform or equipment ...’. This legitimises different height requirements, and prevents a claim that different uniforms are discriminatory. It would not prevent a claim, for example, that women but not men were required to wear uniforms in a particular context. It is the different rules which are protected, not necessarily the way in which those rules are operated. Different equipment is more problematic: Johnston v Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary162 only legitimised differential firearms rules in the particular context of Northern Ireland,163 and any differentiation must be interpreted according to European law. It is submitted that equipment must be read as analogous to clothing rather than referring to special operational policing equipment. For example, it cannot be lawful under this provision to allow male but not female officers to drive specially modified police vehicles.164
