Employment Protection (Amendment) (Hansard, 3 May 1994)

§ Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)
rose—[Interruption.]

§ Madam Speaker
Order. Will hon. Members leave quietly, please? I am sure that the hon. Member can project his voice.

§ Mr. Banks
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am sure I can.
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prevent discrimination in employment against persons solely on grounds that they are overweight. In historical terms, one of the most sympathetic supporters of such a Bill might have been Julius Caesar, because, according to Shakespeare, Caesar liked fat men. In act I, scene II of "Julius Caesar", Shakespeare has him say:
Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o'nights; Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. The Prime Minister would do well to heed Caesar's words. Of course, his choice of Parliamentary Private Secretary follows the emperor's formula. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Luton, South (Mr. Bright) has left the Chamber, but he is certainly fat and sleek-headed—and no one could accuse him of thinking too much. However, yond' right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has that lean and hungry look, and probably never stops thinking about leadership. Caesar would certainly have marked him out as a dangerous man—and I suspect that the Prime Minister would tend to agree.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Donohoe) suggested during Prime Minister's questions that, if the Prime Minister could now identify which member of his Cabinet would play Brutus, he might yet avoid having his back turned into a knife rack come the ides of November.
Caesar may have preferred to surround himself with fat people, but many employers in this country are prejudiced against them. There are problems of definition as to what constitutes overweight. Measurement of appropriate size by reference to height lacks precision. At best, it provides only rough estimates. A person's body weight is determined by a number of factors, including genetics, metabolism and dieting history.
Appropriate—that is, attractive—size is usually decided in cultural terms, and women especially are subjected to impossible cultural pressures. If the ideal female shape is deemed to be that of a Naomi Campbell, a Kate Moss or a Stephanie Seymour, clearly the overwhelming majority of the female population will fail the test. Predictably, it is men who provide the definition, and women who are expected to conform to it.
The obsession with being thin, and thinness being equated with attractiveness, seems to be a western phenomenon, and one of fairly recent vintage. In many other societies, being fat is associated with desirability and status. In this country, and in the United States, fat people are often thought of as indisciplined, unappealing, lazy and probably suffering from some psychological problem.
With such pressures on people, is it any wonder that the diet industries on both sides of the Atlantic have become 592 multi-billion dollar businesses? What a con many of those diets are. Tomorrow, 4 May, is International No Diet Day, with a lobby of Parliament among many other activities in Britain and abroad. On such a day, it would be well worth reminding ourselves that about 95 to 98 per cent. of all diets fail over three years. The remarkable thing is that dieters blame themselves for the failure rather than the diet.
The truth is that people in the country are getting fatter, and shapes are changing. It is estimated that about half the male population are overweight, compared with 39 per cent. in 1980. The proportion of overweight women has increased from 32 to 40 per cent. The average Briton today is not only broader, but about 10 mm taller than his or her counterpart of a decade ago.
Some businesses are taking those challenges into account. London Transport has done just that with the design of the new Central line tubes, where seats have an average weight allowance per person of 74 kg, compared with 65 kg seven years ago. For more than a decade, aircraft weight has been calculated using an average of 78 kg for each male passenger and 68 kg for women. Now, British Airways is designing seats that will cope with the broader bottoms and longer legs.
Although airlines may use seat size as part of their positive advertising campaigns—they will say that they can seat larger passengers—it is a different story when it comes to the recruitment of their staff. As part of the background to the issue, I asked my American intern to call Virgin Airways to see what policy it had in respect of size. She told Virgin that she was 5 ft 8 in tall and that she weighed 11 stone, which is a normal size as far as I am concerned.
In response, she was told that, at 5 ft 8 in, she had to weigh in between 8 stone 9 lb and 10 stone 6 lb. When she asked why, the Virgin spokeswoman said that they at Virgin had an image to keep up and that they only liked to hire young, thin men and women. When my intern protested that she was very athletic and in good shape, she was told again that she would have to lose weight. Virgin informed her that, in any case, it only offered a certain size of uniform and that she would not fit into it—[Laughter.] It sounds like a laughing matter, but that excuse has been used before. For example, Berni Inns was taken to the Equal Opportunities Commission for adopting a similar stand by introducing a maximum uniform size. Berni Inns has dropped that policy, but such discriminatory practices are clearly in evidence in industry. There have been a number of other cases when jobs have been refused to people who are considered overweight, such as in the national health service and by British Rail. Another recent case occurred when a couple in South Glamorgan were rejected as foster parents because of their size.
Although employers rarely admit it, fat people are often passed over for more attractive, thinner people. Employers come up with a number of reasons why they should take thinner people. They say that it is because of the demands of the job or because it is a health matter. However, there is definitely a hidden agenda. Fat people are considered to be unattractive, and employers want to avoid employing them whenever they can.
While it is considered entirely appropriate to have legislation against discrimination on the grounds of race and sex, there are no laws dealing explicitly with the rights of employers to discriminate on the basis of looks. What protection there is comes under the anti-race, anti-sex 593 discrimination laws. Most jobs that lay down maximum size are wrong to do so and, in many cases, such size discrimination is entirely unjustified.
Of course, the trouble is that many of those who are discriminated against are loth to complain, which adds to the problem of there being no specific legislation on the statute book to protect them. My Bill would plug the gap. Personally, I like voluptuousness. Dawn French did a splendid programme on "The South Bank Show" recently, extolling the virtues of Rubenesque women. Most fat people I know are naturally jolly and kind, and are only made unhappy and guilty by what is considered the tyranny of thin people and fashion.
If the Prime Minister thinks about these matters for a bit, he could strike a blow for fat people and do himself a big favour into the bargain. Those he described recently and famously as bastards in his Cabinet—we take them as being the Home Secretary, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State for Wales—are all thin and exceedingly mean men.
The Prime Minister should sack them instantly and promote the likes of the hon. Members for Crawley (Mr. Soames), who is presently the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) and for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens). He should then express his gratitude for the advice by allowing time on the Floor of the House for my Bill.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)
They are all thin.

§ Mr. Banks
Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to join us. After all, she qualifies.