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This politically correct advert is nonsense, says Blunkett Jon Smith A JOBCENTRE was criticised yesterday for rejecting an advert for "hard-working and enthusiastic" staff in case it discriminated against disabled people.

David Blunkett, the Employment Secretary, described the case as a "nonsense", and disabled charities attacked the decision as patronising and absurd.

Two businessmen said they were flabbergasted after Walsall JobCentre, in the West Midlands, told them they could not place an advert asking for industrious applicants for a management trainee post.

Jason Pitt and Bill Wood said the ruling, made on the basis that the words "hard-working" and "enthusiastic" are subjective and may go against equal opportunities guidelines, was political correctness gone mad.

Mr Wood, 51, a sales director who recently bought into Midlands Media, a publisher in Bloxwich, West Midlands, said he had now placed a "censored" advert.

"When we tried to phone through the advert to the JobCentre, we were stopped in our tracks after uttering the word 'hard-working'. They told us, 'You can't put that - it's discrimination'," he said.

"When we got to asking if we could put enthusiastic, she said we couldn't use that either."

Mr Pitt, 25, the managing director, said: "I was reading out the job advert, which started, 'You will be hard-working and enthusiastic …', and they said, 'You can't say that'.

"I asked them if I should start the advert, 'You will be hard-working or bone idle … ', but I was not angry, because I thought it was so funny."

He had to remove the offending words before he could place the advert at the centre.

Mr Blunkett, who is blind, said he had "sorted" this particular case, although he did not specify what action he had taken. He said: "I have fought gesturism all my life and I will continue to do so.

"Unfortunately, I haven't got the time to vet what happens in 1,000 JobCentres. What I can make clear is that, whenever and wherever this nonsense happens, we will intervene to put it right."

Peter Mansell, the chief executive of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, said that to assume disabled people could not be hard-working and enthusiastic was slightly patronising.

He said the JobCentre was patronising in the sense that it wanted to do the right thing but got it wrong.

"It appears they got the wrong end of the stick," he said. "Discrimination is OK, but it is unfair discrimination that is wrong. It's back to the old line of, 'Let's look after disabled people', but it doesn't do any good.

"I think it is normal practice to use words such as hard-working and enthusiastic. I'm disabled and I think I am hard-working and enthusiastic, and I know many other disabled people who are."

A spokesman for Scope, a charity that helps disabled people, said there were important circumstances where words reinforce tangible discrimination against disabled people, but it was "completely absurd" to suggest that disabled people were not hard-working.

"Research has shown that disabled workers can be more productive than their disabled counterparts. We hope that Jobcentres can apply as much energy in finding disabled people work as this centre has in questioning copy," he said.

A spokesman for the Employment Service said: "As a responsible organisation committed to equal opportunities, we will suggest amending the wording if for any reason we feel that a vacancy does not conform to this legislation or can be discriminatory in any way."

Walsall JobCentre's office manager, Jonathan Stevenson, was unavailable for comment, but he was earlier reported as saying: "The words should be specific, not subjective, so that we match the best job-seeker for the job."