PATRICIA HEWITT, the former Trade Secretary, has admitted breaking the Sex Discrimination Act when she overruled advisers and appointed a woman to an influential job instead of a better-qualified male candidate.

Ms Hewitt, now the Health Secretary, and the Department of Trade and Industry were taken to the High Court by Malcolm Hanney, a merchant banker, after he was turned down for a £9,000-a-year position on the South West Regional Development Agency.

In August, before a court hearing, the DTI changed its mind and admitted sexual discrimination. On September 27 the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court ruled that the Secretary of State should pay Mr Hanney’s legal costs of £17,967.17. It described the DTI’s action as “unlawful sex discrimination”.

Mr Hanney said that he had brought the case on principle and was not looking for compensation.

He had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain notes taken at his interview in which he was described as by far the strongest candidate. The panel recommended his appointment, but instead the job went to a woman councillor from Devon who had been the third choice.

Mr Hanney, 52, who lives in Chew Magna, Somerset, was an executive director with HSBC in Hong Kong and a partner with the Chicago Research Trading Group in the US. He was well qualified for the post because of his experience as the chairman of his local primary care trust, the South West Regional Assembly and the South West Local Government Association. He said: “I thought with the knowledge I have of the region and my other skills I stood a good chance of being appointed.”

After the interview at the agency’s headquarters in Exeter in September last year he was told that he was being recommended for the job. Then, on October 28, he learnt that he had missed out to Christine Channon.

Mr Hanney wrote to Tony Medawar, the Government’s top regional development agency civil servant, to claim he thought that the appointment was “sexually discriminatory and illegal as it had ignored the interviewers’ recommendation”. He also filed a complaint to the Commissioner for Public Appointments. At the same time he began employment tribunal proceedings that sex discrimination laws had been breached.

On April 7 the commissioner acknowledged that the appointment was contrary to the code of practice for ministerial appointments. It recommended that the DTI apologise to Mr Hanney, but the department decided not to do so. Mr Hanney said: “The minister knew that the panel had recommended me to the post. She knew she was overriding the panel.”

A spokesman for the DTI said: “The DTI fully accepts the commissioner’s findings that we misunderstood certain provisions in the code. The permanent secretary has written to apologise to Mr Hanney. The department will pick up costs. Processes have changed to ensure this does not happen again.”

Mrs Channon said that the ruling didn’t affect her role on the South West RDA. She said that she was approached last year by a headhunter when she was the leader of Devon County Council.

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