In Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs v Saldanha, S had been offered a posting in Italy, conditional upon his passing an assessment relating to his psychological resilience. As someone of Asian origin, S was asked a number of questions relating to his ability to cope with racism in Italy. S was judged not to have the required level of resilience, with the risk that he might suffer stress due to discrimination and the offer of the posting was withdrawn. The EAT agreed with the ET that S had been directly discriminated against because of his race. Both the assessment and the decision to withdraw the offer were inherently discriminatory. The mental processes of the decision-takers were explicitly based on the fact that S is of Asian origin. The fact that HMRC might also have had other, non-discriminatory reasons in mind did not detract from this conclusion.

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