Report identifies Britain's most disadvantaged jobseekers

“Acceptable” discrimination is allowing Muslim women candidates to be overlooked, a new House of Commons report has found.

Muslim women who wear headscarves are routinely being passed over for jobs and side-lined in the workplace because of what is seen as one of the last forms of “acceptable” discrimination, MPs have warned.

The highly qualified women are being written off because of crude assumptions that they are “submissive and weak”, the Telegraph reports.

Some are driven to abandon wearing traditional Islamic dress in order to get a good job, an inquiry by the Commons Women and Equalities Committee was told.