This week saw the chief executive of Airbnb pledge to stop his hosts discriminating against ethnic minorities by denying them accommodation. This followed a Harvard study last Decemberwhich found that discrimination was widespread.

The research did not extend to the UK, yet thereis no reason not to suspect that the same issues apply here too, to a greater or lesser extent.Not least because there is evidence ofestate agents continuing todiscriminate in London. This included agents of othervisible minority backgrounds misleading African and Caribbean would-be tenants about available rental properties in their area.

There has been a growing debate over how to regulate the on-demand or sharing economy, not just Airbnb but also the likes of Uber and others. Questions over workers rights andprotection -indeed whether hosts, drivers and occasional service suppliers count as workers at all - have occupied the minds of trades unions, governments and think tanks.

But what protection do ordinary citizens have if they are discriminated against by an Airbnb host, for example? Is this a company discriminating against an individual, or one individual discriminating against another. The question matters, because one gives access to existing goods and services protection enshrined in UK equality legislation and the other doesn't.

On the face of it, all UK citizens are covered by the Equality Act 2010, which incorporates protection against discrimination for goods and services, which has been a feature of British equalities laws since the 1968 Race Relations Act. But this has never been properlytested in UK courts, although America has been grappling with several test cases and no doubt British test cases are only a matter of time.

While we should have nothing to worry about in Britain with our goods and service protection, there is still a concern over how courts might interpret any test cases. It's a question that doesn't just cover race but also LGBT+ and other protected characteristics of under-represented groups and minorities.

This is certainly an area that requires study in the UK, not least the extent to which discrimination may be taking place, but also ensuring that discussion around regulation and rights governing the growing on-demand economy also includes equality and non-discrimination.