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Last week, when a smiling Trevor Phillips told his assembled board that, "as they will have heard", he had been reappointed as chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, he was greeted by an awkward hush. Around him, in the modern glass-walled boardroom overlooking the Thames, sat more than a dozen commissioners and senior staff but instead of applause for winning a second term in office, there was just a deafening silence.
"Initially, Trevor looked like the cat who'd just inherited a controlling stake in United Dairies but many of us felt so upset we didn't know where to put ourselves and he just moved swiftly on to the next item on the agenda," one commissioner tells the Standard.
The dramatic tension in the room had been heightened minutes before the meeting began by the hasty removal of the name-plate of commissioner Baroness Jane Campbell, the respected disability rights campaigner, who had sent word she would not be attending and then resigned last Friday.
By the weekend, two more commissioners had quit: human rights academic Francesca Klug and disabilities campaigner Sir Bert Massie. This brought to five the number of commissioners who have walked out in protest at Phillips's controversial leadership in recent months. Two more commissioners, including Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall, are expected to quit shortly.
Then yesterday, to top a calamitous week, the National Audit Office announced it had refused to sign off the commission's annual accounts due to almost £1 million of "irregular expenditure" on seven consultants, many of whom were close allies of Phillips. The report said the payments breached Treasury rules: they were paid £629,276 in voluntary redundancy then immediately re-employed as consultants to the tune of £323,708.
Phillips, 55, a divorced father of two who lives in north London, tried to distance himself from this, saying that it was not his responsibility as a non-executive chairman to hire staff and telling his board that he had "scant knowledge" of anything amiss.
Some commissioners are loath to accept the word of a man they privately call "Teflon Trevor". Especially since one of the staff members was his former special adviser, Faz Hakim, whose position he should have been familiar with. She had also been his special adviser at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which Phillips had chaired before it was absorbed into the new £70 million super-sized equalities quango set up in 2006 to replace the various equality commissions on disability, gender and race, and expanded to incorporate age, sex and religious discrimination. "In my view, it is highly unlikely that Phillips didn't know what was going on," says Kay Hampton, a professor in race relations who resigned as a commissioner in April. "When the commission was starting up, I spoke to Trevor and raised concerns about staff moving from the CRE to the Equalities Commission without proper contracts being raised or correct procedure being followed.
"Some of the people I brought to his attention are people implicated in the auditors' report. At the time he ignored me, isolated me, and then tried to intimidate me and make me the problem."
Alienated: (l-r) Kay Hampton, Ben Summerskill, Nicola Brewer and Baroness Campbell
Sir Bert Massie spoke more generally, opining that he had long been concerned about "corporate governance" at the commission, and adding: "The chairman's conduct in various ways has damaged the commission's external reputation." Other commissioners, speaking anonymously, told the Standard that Phillips liked to surround himself with cronies who would toe the line and support his position.
Phillips was not available to answer his critics. A press officer said he was "on holiday in Europe", despite this being the most turbulent week in the three-year history of the commission. Yet setting aside the issue as to what Phillips knew and when, the question uppermost for many commissioners is this: what caused Harriet Harman, the equalities minister, to overrule her junior minister, Maria Eagle, who had apparently vigorously opposed the reappointment of Phillips? Harman would have known all about the upcoming critical audit report, as well as the general disquiet caused by Phillips's leadership, yet she chose to give him another three-year term. Why?
For many the words Peter and Mandelson spring to mind. It is well known that the business secretary has long been a close pal of Phillips, having been best man at his wedding in 1981. "There is a feeling that Trevor was saved by friends in high places," says Hampton. "Certainly, while I was a commissioner, he never tried to hide how well connected he was to senior figures in government, especially Mandelson."
Interestingly Phillips's supporters do not deny that Mandelson could have played a key role. A senior source in the commission told the Standard: "Many people were shocked when Trevor was re-appointed but I was not surprised because I had been given the signal that Harriet Harman backed Trevor and that, as far as we were aware, so did Mandelson. Trevor has made mistakes, and it is undoubtedly true that it has been a difficult birth for the new commission, but Harriet probably took the view that Trevor's style of leadership and modernising agenda is more conducive to getting results than that of the disgruntled commissioners, half of whom probably thought they should be running the commission themselves."
This is precisely his style of leadership that lies at the root of the infighting. Massie calls it "autocratic and divisive". "You learn of new policies through a press release he has issued instead of through democratic discussion on the board," he says.
Hampton argues that Phillips's style is more conducive to running a political party than a human rights organisation. "Basically, the way he works is this: if you're blindingly loyal, you're brought into his inner circle but if you ask awkward questions, as I did, you're marginalised and excluded. It's divide and rule."
Even Phillips's defenders accept that his inability to adopt a more inclusive style has been "problematic" and has "caused tension with commissioners used to a different culture". They also admit that his insistence on keeping his majority shareholding in Equate, the private consultancy he co-founded which gives advice on race issues, "is unacceptable for many, including some of his allies" and has caused "a widespread perception of a conflict of interest".
These concerns came to a head when it emerged that Phillips had been advising Channel Four in his private capacity over the alleged racism meted out to Shilpa Shetty by the late Jade Goody on Celebrity Big Brother in 2007, and that he had received a fat fee through his company.
Phillips protested that he was entitled to his private work as the quango paid him £110,000 for a three-and-a-half-day week but his fellow commissioners took a strong stand and he was forced to resign as a director of Equate and refrain from advising public or private sector bodies that were potentially subject to regulation by the commission.
A close aide of Phillips says: "For a long time, Trevor just didn't get it. He sort of gets it now but, to be frank, it's still a bloody tricky problem, because if you're chair of a regulator, you're chair of a regulator and it can't be right for you to earn money from advising on race in your private capacity."
Professor Hampton believes that Phillips and the consultants censured for taking redundancy then being rehired have damaged the image of the equalities commission. "Phillips must take responsibility for what's happened on his watch, too," she says. "I quit following the resignation of the chief executive Nicola Brewer in April.
For 18 months, there was so much bad blood between Phillips and Brewer and so much petty infighting that our ability to operate effectively was seriously compromised. If I was in Trevor's situation, I'd resign. I suspect there will be more resignations and yet more attacks on his credibility and I don't think the pressure on him will ease."
Although Phillips will face a grilling by the Commons Public Accounts committee when MPs return from their summer break, there is little prospect of him throwing in the towel. He might be a graduate of Imperial College and a smooth New Labour communicator but he is also a tough streetfighter who relishes a scrap. Three years ago he faced down Ken Livingstone, who accused him of being so critical of multiculturalism that he expected him to "soon be joining the BNP". In comparison, these dissident commissioners might appear small fry.
"If you say anything critical of Phillips to the press, you get a shouting phone call from him demanding to be told whether it was you who spoke to the media," one commissioner says. "Trevor's problem is that he has no idea how to work with people in a collegiate way, which is what human rights work is all about. He's not the right man for the job but I fear that with Harriet's support, nothing can sink him now."
Ironically, some fear that the resignations of Phillips's enemies have played into his hands. "Now that the commissioners have been told by the government that they have to reapply for their jobs in September and that their numbers will be cut from 16 to 11, the balance of power h as shifted," a senior source says. "How Trevor has pulled it off is something. Ten days ago, everyone thought he was done for. Now he appears unstoppable. It really is quite a coup."
Reader views (10)
He got the job because he is black.
- Claire, London
trevor philips - what a waste of space. shame on harriet harman for reappointing him.
- Tony, greater london
Surely this guy is univerally unpopular and disrespected. Get rid.
- Michael, Kensington, UK
I wonder what the probability is of a white, anglo saxon heterosexual man getting the position or might there be a litlle less equality in that scenario?
- Colin Macpherson, Gramat France
phillips and his stupid EHRC should be disbanded immediately , save us money now
- Denise G, Norfolk
Roz from France,
What you say makes a lot of sense, but Phillips would never encourage such a notion. What would he do with himself if he didn't have race and racism to bleat on about? The man is obsessed but he's got a reason to be obsessed: it keeps him in paid employment.
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
The only monority group Trevor Philips is interested in is Trevor Philips and Friends! Scrap this unnecessary quango now.
- Man U Fan, London
@ Roz, France
"The UK needs a Socialist Government, .."
Do you realise how profoundly wrong you are?
Racism is at the very heart of this cockup of a quango, except it is not racism as defined by this government.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
In France you are just French. My landlord and my neighbour are just French - they happen to be gay, but that's not relevant to the rest of us and not something they make a big deal about themselves. A couple of my son's friends at school are 'black', but as France doesn't count how many people it has of which racial origin, they are just plain 'French'. The French state is paramount, so religion doesn't really enter into it.
Why does the UK need this huge great fat Quango called 'The Equalities Commission? You can better your bottom dollar that if you were a white middle-class heterosexual man you wouldn't get very far in it and your opportunities would be far from equal: it is rank hypocrisy. The UK needs a Socialist Government, not a quasi-communist one with a rampant agenda for social engineering. When someone is British they should get the same start in life, the same education, and then they can make of that start what they wish.
What about the children in the countryside who are discriminated against with higher living costs and rubbish healthcare and schooling? Is there a Quango representing them? Nah: they're not cool and might not vote labour . . .
Animal Farm had the nub of it: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Give everyone the same!
- Roz, France
Phillips is a Brown-placeman and professional New Labour freeloader. In fact, if he was thrust into the world of wealth creation he would bsrely make it to the role of carpark attendant.
- Ted, London
