Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 47)
TUESDAY 24 APRIL 2007
MR TREVOR
PHILLIPS OBE
Q40 Martin Horwood: There are two
crucial differences there. I am an environment spokesman and I
know about this. Environmental performance is measurable to the
nth degree, with scientific data, and the reason companies
pay attention to it is because their customers have a very positive
perception about it. If you look at something like mental illness
or learning disability, there is not necessarily that very positive
public perception because the public also think people in wheelchairs
are probably the most obvious discrimination they would like to
see tackled. How do you measure how much an organisation is doing,
for instance, to promote positive attitudes to people with mental
illness? Where will that show up in the process you are describing?
Mr Phillips: Let us not specifically
deal with the issue of mental illness because that is a very particular
question about measurement and how you get data and so forth,
but if, for example, your data shows that you never employ a woman
above a certain level or you never employ a person who is registered
disabled, for example, or somebody who is gay, that says something
about your organisation. Most organisations today want to know
that.
Q41 Martin Horwood: But, again, you
are coming back to things that are hard data, although it would
be interesting to see how you measured the gay issue because you
could not necessarily spot amongst those employees who was gay
and who was not. I do not know how you would get to that set of
data.
Mr Phillips: Because if you ask
them, people—not everybody—will tell you. We can have
a lengthy and interesting argument about the value of quantitative
data as opposed to qualitative data but I do not think there is
anything in what the Equalities Review proposes and certainly
nothing in what the Commission on Equality and Human Rights has
in its locker that says we must do this and we must not do that.
All of this information is important. If I could come back to
a point I made earlier, in most of the best performing entities,
both in the public and the private sectors, one of the features
that you see is the development of networks of people, gender-based
networks, ethnicity-based networks, organisations which are to
do with LGBT employees, who are entities within the organisation,
who do speak about these more subtle issues. You hear that, but
you have to have it alongside some concrete data. If you do not
have the concrete data, our experience is—and this is the
real experience—that people say, "You're just saying
that because you've had a bad experience." The only way in
which you move most organisations—and it is reasonable—is
to be able to produce evidence. I am not quite sure why there
is hostility to producing data.
Chair: Martin, I think we have explored
this to exhaustion—certainly to the exhaustion of the rest
of us. Could we move on, finally, to an issue related to the Human
Rights Act.
Q42 Mr Hands: Do you think it is
going to be a priority of the Commission to change public and
media views, or some might say perceived views, of the Human Rights
Act?
Mr Phillips: Without question.
Absolutely without question. At the present time, human rights
as a concept is generally seen as a framework which allows perverse
individuals to set their own personal interest against the interests
of the community as a whole, and we get ludicrous stories of men
on roofs being given Kentucky Fried Chicken and all of this, which
represents at the moment what people think human rights is about.
An absolutely essential task of the Commission on Equality and
Human Rights in its promotional guise in relation to human rights
is to shift that perception, to shift it to one in which human
rights sits properly as a key ingredient of our culture, which
protects, for example, the interests of the individual against
over-weaning bureaucracy, which ensures that people are treated
with dignity and respect. The classic example is the elderly,
vulnerable person in the care home. Discrimination will not apply,
because in some care homes they are all treated equally badly,
but human rights gives us a threshold below which their treatment
may not sink. Also, by the way, I think human rights becomes incredibly
important as a framework in which we can resolve some of what
people describe as conflict of rights, let us say, between those
people who think that the interests of their faith may override
questions of equality in relation to sexual orientation or gender
equality. I think promoting a human rights framework as something
that is useful to our society rather than as a weapon for individuals
who are selfish is an incredibly important aspect of our function.
Q43 Mr Hands: How do you propose
to challenge that?
Mr Phillips: There are two ways
in which you do it. First of all, you have to say it: you have
to say that is what human rights is about. Secondly, I hope we
will be able to demonstrate, particularly at a local level, how
this could be made to work. The British Institute for Human Rights,
for example, is doing some valuable work locally in helping institutions
to resolve some conflicts, of the kind I have mentioned about
the way people are treated, using a human rights framework. In
the end, the way people get convinced about something is when
they see changes in the real-life treatment of people they care
about, their elderly relatives or a disabled person with whom
they are associated, because of the use of this framework. We
have seen that being used most effectively by the Disability Rights
Commission already. I suspect this Commission on Equality and
Human Rights, though it cannot take stand-alone human rights cases,
will be in a position to promote such a change.
Q44 Mr Hands: You have put across
quite a broad vision of the role and I guess there is a perception
out there amongst some groups that your vision might be just a
bit too broad and that their particular strand may suffer as a
result of this. I think that is a perception held by many. Could
I ask you on a specific area. You have had a number of comments
in the recent past about what could be broadly called "community
cohesion" which is obviously another key area of the DCLG
remit. How far do you see the CEHR's role being one of helping
to promote community cohesion?
Mr Phillips: I think it is a profoundly
important part of our role. But you will see that in the Act we
are accorded a good relations mandate, which is rather broader
than the one that is currently accorded to the Commission for
Racial Equality. I think that is tremendously important. Coming
back to the point I made about human rights, I think the human
rights framework will probably help us in trying not to adjudicate
but to provide a way of discussing some of the conflicts which
take place—and here groups do become important—between
groups of people who feel that, for cultural or for other reasons,
they are at odds with other groups. This is going to be tremendously
important for us. I would just caution against one thing, though:
we do have to make a distinction between the interests of groups
of people and the interests of organisations who are sometimes
their advocates. That is not to say that one is bad and one is
good but I do think that sometimes we respond not to the needs
of the community but sometimes to the needs of the institutions
that purport to speak on their behalf. Sometimes we have to be
a little bit careful about not confusing those two things.
Q45 Martin Horwood: Do you know people's
human rights extend to celebrating and maintaining separate identities?
I am not necessarily trying to draw you into a controversial statement
about ethnic multiculturalism—though feel free, if you want—
Mr Phillips: I am sure you are!
Q46 Martin Horwood: But you could
think about deaf poets or wheelchair athletes or many of the other
populations that, in a sense, you now have some responsibility
towards.
Mr Phillips: Yes, of course. If
I may go back to my original statement, at the heart of our vision
is a very simple thing: a nation at ease with all aspects of its
diversity, built on fairness and respect. That means, amongst
other things, that we respect people's idea of who and what they
are. That is why we respect their sexual orientation but we also
respect their faith. But that has to take place within the context
of a cohesive, coherent society that has certain things that we
hold in common. If there is a very simple answer to your implied
question, these two things have to sit next to each other but
there are certain things where difference cannot trump what we
have in common. The Commission on Equality and Human Rights is
one of the instruments that will help us to find that balance
and to track it as it changes, because the balance between individual
expression or expression of an individual identity and what constitutes
community cohesion is not exactly the same as it was 20 years
ago. We change as a society. This is always a subject that is
going to be under discussion but now we have a structure that
allows us to discuss it properly and not with animosity.
Q47 Chair: Thank you very much, Mr
Phillips. As you repeated at the beginning, your Commission is
a creation of Parliament and this Committee certainly takes very
seriously our responsibilities to monitor policy in relation to
equalities and community cohesion. It has been a useful discussion.
I am sure we will return to these issues and we will certainly
be monitoring the work that your Commission is doing. I hope that
as you develop firmer plans on your budget example, this Committee
will be getting the information we need in order to fulfil our
parliamentary role in oversight of work in this area. Thank you
very much.
Mr Phillips: We will ensure that.
Might I say that I think it will always be a pleasure to appear
before you. Thank you.
Chair: That depends on how successfully
you are doing your work.
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