Thanks for your input. I totally understand the point of the scheme and think it's a positive step, I just find it hard that it's specifically exclude people because of their race and gender.

I would think valid points can be made against this specifically:

If the company has identified black candidates and women candidates as being under represented, then the privilege lies squarely with the subsets of people that are over represented?

The privilege lies with those over-represented people who are already employed.

Schemes like this actually make those white males at the company safer - if they don't hire more white males then they can keep their job and not risk the figures looking bad. Conversely, if they hired more white males, they might need to let go of some of the existing white males at the top if they want to achieve certain levels of diversity.

The privilege is absolutely not with the people who are being denied this opportunity. They are suffering for the failings of the past - failures of those who are at the top of the company currently. They are suffering because of their race and gender.

Companies are now also looking at social-economic class as a subset to focus on, although I don’t think that’s statutory yet.

I'm glad to hear that something like this is in the works.