David Isaac: Equalities chief bids farewell after four ‘momentous’ years

Why has the EHRC chair departed? Because, he says, it’s time for action, not foot-dragging, and he is now out of step with his government bosses

“The last four years have felt pretty momentous,” says David Isaac, who left his position as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission on Saturday. “There’s Brexit, there’s the pandemic, there’s Grenfell, Windrush, #MeToo, and George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.”

Not to mention the commission’s unprecedented investigations into allegations of antisemitism within the Labour party and the Home Office’s hostile environment immigration policy, the results of which are pending.

Isaac took over two months before the Brexit referendum but now finds himself surplus to requirements because the government wants someone who, as he describes it, is “more like their agenda”.

A government spokeswoman puts it another way: “It is usual for chairs to change periodically to allow new perspectives and fresh thinking on issues.”

That the chair of the watchdog is a political appointment highlights what critics say is its limited independence.

Not only does the government fund the commission, it appoints its commissioners, of which there are currently 10. Astonishingly, the commission currently has no black commissioners.

“I’ve been calling for lots of black and BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] people to apply so we as a commission look more like the people we seek to represent,” Isaac said. “We put forward names but they [government] make the decision.”

He points out that the entire commission – an umbrella organisation set up to protect the rights of marginalised sectors of society including disabled people, BAME communities, women and LGBTQ+ groups – now has a budget of just £17m, a fraction of the £70m it had at its peak and £2m less than the Commission for Racial Equality alone was allocated in 2006. “Inevitably it means we can do less,” Isaac said.

The rise of Black Lives Matter has been seen by some as evidence of just how much less, with the commission accused of failing in its duty to promote racial equality.

The government spokeswoman pointed out that BAME representation in the EHRC workforce has itself dropped over the last four years, from 16% to 13%. She said the minister for equalities, Kemi Badenoch, had met Isaac and the commission’s chief executive, Rebecca Hilsenrath, twice in July “and at neither of the meetings did they raise criticisms of HMG on race policy, or the new commission, or the alleged lack of BAME EHRC commissioners.”

But Isaac defended the commission’s record on race, pointing out its successes fighting discrimination on a case-by-case basis. The death of George Floyd, which has sparked worldwide protests, has, though, he acknowledged, become a tipping point.

“The nation has started to talk about Black Lives Matter and the issues arising from that in a way that I don’t think we were talking about things even in March.”

The government’s response to the emergence of BLM – it is setting up a new commission on race and ethnic disparities to “improve our evidence base to change lives for the better,” the spokeswoman explained – is a foot-dragging exercise, Isaac believes.

“I’ve said to government that the time for making recommendations is over. There’s a coherent strategy we’ve set out, a lot of the data already exists and we want government to take action.”

But the “big, unspoken” issue in the debate about race, Isaac said, was how it related to “inequality of opportunity and poverty”, and he lamented the fact that the commission does not have the power to investigate such factors.

In Scotland, public bodies now have a legal duty to consider socioeconomic factors when making decisions about how they allocate resources.

Wales is pushing through similar proposals which “could really result in a different prioritisation of resources” if they were introduced to England, Isaac suggested. “But England has not followed suit. There are provisions that have never been enacted [under the 2010 Equality Act] to look at the socioeconomic side of things but this government has never been keen to introduce them.”

The government spokeswoman said ministers did not believe the act should be used “as a means of social engineering, which would ultimately have significant cost burdens for the public sector”. But the urgent need to examine socioeconomic inequalities has been made stark during the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected the health of low-paid workers, many of whom have not been furloughed and have had no choice but to work during lockdown.

“The very people saving lives on the frontline and keeping our shops open and buses running are people who have less positive outcomes in terms of education and the workplace,” Isaac said.

The pandemic has also exposed the vulnerability of disabled people. “I’ve been shocked in my four years to see quite how badly treated disabled people are in this country. They are treated as second-class citizens, whether it’s in relation to education or employment. Covid has made things much worse.”

It’s a pretty bleak picture, but Isaac is keen to take the long view.

“We’re in a very different place in this country to where we were when the equality and race legislation was set up in the 1970s. But because everyone is shouting and seeing this as a competition for rights, it’s quite difficult to acknowledge that we’ve made huge progress and to deal with the more nuanced positions. It’s all bundled together in these very extreme positions.”

Positions that are unlikely to become less extreme any time soon as the profound social tensions which first erupted during Brexit continue to play out. A problem for Isaac’s successor, whoever the government chooses.

Contributor

Jamie Doward

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
From Tudor courts to BLM, a book brings London’s black history to life
The work highlights the plaques and art that celebrate a neglected side of the capital’s culture

Harriet Sherwood

20, Jun, 2021 @6:15 AM

Article image
'Polarised' debate on gender recognition is harming UK, says equalities chief
David Isaac urges women’s groups and transgender campaigners to listen to each other and focus on consensus

Jamie Doward

08, Aug, 2020 @7:30 PM

Article image
Homeless, stateless … ‘Now I feel I’m somewhere they will not judge me’
Clients of Praxis Community Projects, an immigration support centre, share their stories of hope
• Please donate to our appeal here

Aamna Mohdin

30, Dec, 2018 @5:59 AM

Article image
Equality watchdog’s human rights fight ‘under threat’ after cuts
Union fears Equality Commission will become ‘dog with no bark, no bite and no ability to watch’

Jamie Doward

20, Nov, 2016 @12:05 AM

Article image
Human rights commission to launch its own Grenfell fire inquiry
Dramatic intervention will examine whether government and local council failed in duty to protect life and provide safe housing

Jamie Doward and Anna Menin

09, Dec, 2017 @8:30 PM

Article image
Windrush scandal continues as Chagos Islanders are pressed to ‘go back’
British passport holders say they are routinely pressed by council officers to leave the UK

Katie McQue, Mark Townsend and Katie Armour

28, Jul, 2019 @5:00 AM

Article image
Windrush: archived documents show the long betrayal
Seeds of the 2018 scandal were sown in 1948 by a government that was unwilling to treat black immigrants as British

David Olusoga

16, Jun, 2019 @7:00 AM

Article image
New equalities commissioner attacked ‘modern feminism’ and #MeToo
Jessica Butcher claimed ‘victimhood narrative’ disempowered women, and disputed reasons for gender pay gap

Chaminda Jayanetti

22, Nov, 2020 @8:00 AM

Article image
600 UK churches sign up to welcome Christian arrivals from Hong Kong
We must not repeat the mistakes of the Windrush era, say clergy

Harriet Sherwood

14, Aug, 2021 @1:44 PM

Article image
‘This country welcomed me. Now it’s my turn to welcome others’: how readers were inspired to donate
In the last week of our appeal, readers explain why they pushed the total to more than £850,000
• Please donate to our appeal here

Patrick Butler

06, Jan, 2019 @9:00 AM