All Party Parliamentary Group on Dalits

At the AGM of the APPG on Dalits on July 6 I was re-elected as vice-chair, Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Harries remaining as co-Chairs. The Group arranged to pepper the Government with questions to pin down their intentions about the legislation agreed as long ago as April 20013, to add caste to the listed characteristics in the Equality Act. The Government are now arguing that the case of Tirkey v Chandhok is a precedent for cases of caste discrimination, but the judge in that case said the court was addressing the particular circumstances of the case, and the determination wouldn't necessarily apply to other cases. This means that a litigant would have to show that his case was on all fours with Tirkey before proceeding to his substantive argument, making attempts to gain redress for caste discrimination expensive,