John Lewis’ chairman shuns Farage idea firms should be free to hire Brits

The chairman of John Lewis Charlie Mayfield made clear on Thursday what he thought of Nigel Farage’s plans to scrap racial discrimination laws should Ukip ever form a government.

While he stressed John Lewis was “constitutionally” apolitical, because of its unusual partnership structure, Mr Mayfield told me he would never use ethnicity as a criteria for hiring.

“I personally believe that having a diverse economy and workforce is a very positive thing about our country,” he said.

When asked if he would ever use such change in the law to hire a Brit over, for example, an Eastern European candidate, Mayfield looked bemused.

“I don’t think that ethnicity is a criteria on which we would seek to make that decision,” he said.

“What we are saying is we want to increase more diversity and encourage more progression of people from ethnic minorities in the (John Lewis) Partnership.

Rather than being obsessed with immigration, Mr Mayfield, who is also Chairman of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, said Britain needed to spend more time finding ways to boost worker productivity through better training and better matching of the right skills to the job.

“We need to see productivity improving,” he said. “The way to improve productivity is to look carefully at the way you can improve the skills of the people in work,” he said.

“Action needs to be taken to improve it. The majority of that action needs to be taken by employers – encouraged and supported by government.”

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