Shocking News on Trevor Phillips

Trevor Phillips is the head of the government's equality racket, which spends astronomical amounts of taxpayers' cash fighting frivolous lawsuits on behalf of various favoured 'minority' groups and discriminating against white, British men.

As one might expect, Mr Phillips is a black man - and very well he's done out of the politically correct culture of guilt which infests the elite of this country.

Things aren't looking bright for his future, however - many in his organisation have been resigning. Some have gone so far as to claim - shock, horror - that Phillips might have played the race card in order to hang on to his job this long.

Surely some mistake?

I mean, after all, it's not as if he's devoted his entire life to climbing up a series of greasy poles to great rewards simply because of the colour of his skin, is it?

Most of those pushing for his resignation are themselves cynical hacks pushing the interests of their own group rather than any sort of equality.

As the country becomes if anything more divided, these egotistical, ideological zealots have been handed over £70 million of taxpayers' money in order to pursue interests which run contrary to the needs and wishes of the majority.

From The Times:

Trevor Phillips, the government’s equality champion, has been accused of playing the “race card” to save his career, amid new, high-level walk-outs at his £70m, taxpayer-funded quango.

Phillips, the £120,000-a-year chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), told colleagues his enemies were trying to oust him because he was a “black man”, it was claimed last night.

He is alleged to have said his critics thought a “white woman” would have been able to do the job better.

Meanwhile, Phillips’s right-hand man, Kamal Ahmed, has this weekend resigned his post as director of communications.

It is understood a sixth member of the commission’s 16-strong ruling body is on the brink of quitting in protest at Phillips’s autocratic management style. Baroness Greengross, vice-president of Age Concern, said she was considering her future.

The allegations that Phillips has played the race card were made by Kay Hampton, a South African-born academic who quit as a commissioner in March.

Hampton, a black woman who is a veteran of the struggle against apartheid, said: “Nobody is prepared to challenge Trevor for fear of being accused of racism.

“He has already played the race card in the commission. I suspect this could be the reason why Harriet Harman (the equality minister) reappointed him (earlier this month).”

She recounted how in a telephone call earlier this year, Phillips had complained to her that he was a victim of racism.

“He told me: ‘There is a group [in the commission] that think I am not good enough because I am a black man, and a white woman should have got the post’.”

Hampton said Phillips had made phone calls making similar allegations to at least two other commissioners. “If he was not black, people could look more clearly at the wrongdoing rather than his colour and background,” she said.

The alleged remarks are surprising because in public Phillips has criticised trivial allegations of discrimination and taken issue with those who talk about “black victimhood”.

“In many parts of the country, the colour of a person’s skin is simply not an issue,” he wrote in January.

A spokesman for Phillips said: “We do not comment on private telephone conversations.”

Asked whether Phillips should now quit, Hampton said: “That is not for me to say. Trevor should examine his conscience.” Diane Abbott, the senior black Labour MP, added: “Trevor must consider his position.”

Yesterday, Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall who quit as a commissioner last week, added to the pressure on Phillips by disclosing his concerns about the chairman’s “probity”.

The new controversy over Phillips’s leadership was reignited earlier this month when Phillips was appointed for a second three-year term by Harman.

Last week, a scathing report from the National Audit Office (NAO) found the EHRC had spent nearly £1m when it re-employed seven staff from the defunct Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) immediately after they had received severance and early retirement payments. The EHRC had failed to seek Treasury approval.

Hampton, who was chairwoman of the CRE before it was merged into the new equality commission in 2007, said she had urged Phillips to take action over the arrangements.

“I warned him at the beginning about the whole problem. He did not want to know,” she said.

Summerskill, in his resignation letter to Harman, blamed Phillips personally.

“If your proposed re-appointment were to be made then, as chair of the commission’s audit and risk committee, I would feel entirely unable to offer future reassurance to the NAO that the commission was being led ... with appropriate probity,” he wrote.

The commission said Phillips had played no role in the reappointments.

Nearly half Phillips’s fellow commissioners have now quit, accusing him of treating the quango as a personal platform.

Summerskill accused Phillips of running “a one-man show. He has made controversial announcements on the hoof without telling or consulting anyone”.

Others who have walked out claim he has treated them with disdain, working only through a tight group of cronies.

Phillips, 55, a former television executive, was seen as the man to weld together single-issue lobby groups on race relations, gay rights and disability rights into the EHRC.

He infuriated some commissioners with his public statements, claiming, for example, that the police were no longer “institutionally racist”.

The splits burst open in March when Hampton became the first commissioner to leave. The following month, Nicola Brewer, chief executive, went.

Phillips’s enemies then tried to manoeuvre with the government to get rid of him. Baroness Royall, the Labour leader in the Lords, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, and Maria Eagle, deputy to Harman, were sounded out.

Various other jobs were suggested for Phillips, including, according to one source, a peerage. It is understood Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, quietly discouraged this.

The latest walkouts also include the disability campaigners Sir Bert Massie and Baroness Campbell and the human rights lawyer Francesca Klug.

Remaining members have been told they must reapply for jobs on a slimmed-down EHRC. Harman will choose the winners — a chance to pick a more pliant group.

An advertisement for eight commissioners’ jobs appears in today’s Sunday Times. The advert says they must “hold the chair ... to account” and warns they will work in “a highly political environment”.