I always understood that you can ask any question about it as long as you could ask a man the same question, e.g

you can't ask 'are you planning to get pregnant'

but you can ask 'are you planning to start a family'

Which is stupid since they mean the same thing.

I heard a chap yesterday sitting outside a pub in Liverpool Street talking on a mobile to an interviewer about a job at JP Morgan.

He was shouting at the guy saying 'Why do you want to know where my family are from'? and 'Why do you want to know if they are from Scotland'?, 'What has that got to do with it'?
He was very flustered and asked to speak with a manager where the argument continued. Many times he said he will 'sue them for those questions'!
Interesting!

Tc

Not entirely correct. You can't ask a woman if she is planning to start a family. You can't ask any question along those lines as in the eyes of the law it can have no bearing on whether or not you should employ her.

They were talking about the questioning of Katie concerning child care on woman's hour yesterday and one person thought it was valid to ask about those details considering her present location. They mentioned Tre should have been asked the same but I don't agree, he was never in the frame for the job so it made perfect sense not to go into those details. At the end of the day if you are going to offer a job you have to be practical and travel / location etc is something that will always come up along with re-locating your family if applicable.

You should not ask "are you planning to start a family " to a female candidate as the clear inference from that that could be drawn is that you want to know if she is likely to be taking maternity leave-which would not apply to a male candidate even if asked the same question.

However you are entitled to ask questions about existing childcare so long as both male and female candidates are asked.The reason people believe that the questions are not allowed is that lawyers know that their clients are unlikely to put the questions in a non-discriminatory way and hence the easiest advice to give is "don't ask!"

Of course most prospective employers wouldn't even know about the existence of any children-it wouldn't tend to appear on a CV.But this is a game show!