Equality chief under fire over ‘unacceptable’ fee payments to allies

Britain’s equality czar today faces renewed criticism of his leadership amid a damning new Whitehall audit report and a string of resignations.

Trevor Phillips, who was reappointed last week as chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, faces fresh scrutiny as the National Audit Office publishes critical findings about the way he has run the organisation.

In its report, Whitehall’s spending watchdog will describe as “unacceptable” a decision to pay nearly £300,000 in consultancy fees to four members of the Commission for Racial Equality, who had already received large redundancy pay-offs when that organisation was scrapped to make way for the new equalities commission.

Critics will seize on the payments, given to close allies of Mr Phillips, as further evidence of his unsuitability for his post, a three-year term. The National Audit Office is so concerned that it will fail to approve the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s annual accounts.

In a further blow to Mr Phillips, who has run the equalities commission since its creation, Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill is expected to resign in the coming days in protest at the way the body is being run. Mr Summerskill would follow the departure of five others, including three in the past week.

A seventh commissioner, the academic Ziauddin Sardar, is also thought to be considering his position.

One of the departing commissioners, Sir Bert Massie, former chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, today said the £70million-a-year equalities commission’s corporate governance had “been a shambles from the start”.

Sir Bert, 60, who has been disabled since the age of three months, added: “We never got it right and responsibility always lies at the top. Many of us thought a change of leadership might improve matters. Instead, the minister decided to re-apppoint the chair and make the rest of us re-apply for our jobs, which is not an honourable way of proceeding. My resignation is to protest at the way things have happened.”

Lord Ouseley, former chairman of the Commission for Race Relations, said the equalities commission had achieved “little or nothing” despite its huge budget. He said: “It is full of cronyism and the latest twist, making commissioners apply for their own jobs, has caused the best ones to walk away. The EHRC has let down those it was supposed to help. Now it’s doomed.”

Social care expert Baroness Campbell and the academic Francesca Klug resigned from the commission earlier this year. The latter mentioned “problems of leadership and governance” in her resignation letter. Kay Hampton, who resigned in March, said the body was “being run with fear and paranoia”. Mr Phillips’ allies reject the criticisms of what they call his more up-to-date management style and insist his opponents are motivated by political grievances.