Is accent discrimination unlawful?

The study surveyed attitudes towards accents across south east England by playing clips of speakers reading the same script. The listeners were then asked to rate the speakers’ intelligence and people from London and Essex were judged to be less intelligent than those from other south east regions.

Whilst it’s unlawful under the Equality Act 2010 to discriminate against job applicants on the ground of their race, including their nationality or national origins, it’s currently not unlawful to discriminate against them on the ground of their regional accent. For example, Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham are English cities that are well known for their strong regional accents, but it wouldn’t amount to unlawful discrimination to reject a job applicant because they had such an accent. The only exception here is that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are treated as separate nations and so it can constitute race discrimination to treat, for example, a Scottish job applicant less favourably than an English one.

Although the participants in this survey perceived some regional accents to be less intelligent than others, that’s a negative judgement based on entrenched and often unconscious accent prejudice rather than a reality. There is no “correct” or “proper” way of speaking and employers could lose out on a great job applicant if they refuse to offer them a job purely because of their accent. As accent bias can arise at the interview stage of recruitment, it’s better to do panel interviews using a diverse panel rather than one-on-one interviews and to ensure that the questions put to all interviewees are the same.