Procurement and the ‘London Living Wage’: Boohene v Royal Parks Ltd

This note analyses the Court of Appeal’s decision in the Boohene case. The defendant paid the ‘London Living Wage’ to its own workers but did not require its contractors to pay this rate tothe workers they employed. The claimants sought to challenge this as race discrimination against them as ‘contract workers’ under s. 41 Equality Act 2010, because of a clear difference in the ethnicities of the two groups of workers. The claim was unsuccessful because the Court of Appeal ultimately concluded that the claimants’ wages were set by their employer, the contractor, not by the defendant, even though the defendant influenced their wages by setting the price of the contract. The case highlights the complex and sometimes problematic relationship between outsourcing and wages.