A leading employment judge has demanded new laws to help the overweight fight “fattism” by allowing them to sue colleagues who offend them. Philip Rostant, the training director for the Employment Tribunals of England and Wales, claimed in an academic paper that fat people are paid on average less and are more likely to be fired. He argued that new laws could stop such “prejudice” against people with what he called “non-ideal weight”. The paper insists that “fattism” should feature along side other hate crimes such as racism and homophobia. It points out that currently under the Equality Act of 2010 discrimination against people because of age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and disability are all outlawed. Fat people however can only claim such protected status if they can also prove that their weight is so debilitating that it constitutes a disability. “Being overweight, or even obese, is not in itself a prohibited ground of discrimination in UK law, or in the law of the European Union,” the paper says. Claiming: “This situation leaves a gap in the law which is remediable only by legislative reform”. If enacted, the proposals would result in the vast majority of people in the UK being