The first Corporate Equality Index, undertaken by Stonewall, has revealed that 12 FTSE100 companies and 11 government departments are in the top 100 organisations with effective equalities policies or openly gay board directors.
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The 2003 Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations made workplace discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people unlawful, and the Stonewall index is designed to show the employment prospects for the estimated 1.7 million gay people in the UK workforce.
The index follows research conducted by the University of Cardiff for Stonewall, which found that one in four lesbian, gay or bisexual people in Wales had been dismissed or forced to leave a job at some point in their working lives.
The Inland Revenue was joint-seventh in the index, alongside Nottingham Primary Care Trusts. PricewaterhouseCoopers ranked 17th, the DTI 27th, HM Treasury 31st, and Ernst & Young 49th.
The British Council was the country’s top employer for gay people, with Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, IBM and Manchester City Council in joint second place. Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill said: ‘The Corporate Equality Index demonstrates that many major employers are firmly committed to supporting and developing gay staff. We hope it will serve as a positive agent of change across the whole UK workplace for many years to come.’