Last month a huge new institution that should be at the heart of the progressive cause came into life – the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It has not had an auspicious start. Unloved by many, its creation owed far more to lobbying between equality ‘strands’ and the desire to cut costs than to any strategic vision for tackling inequality in the 21st century. Indeed, it was not until after the organisation had been created that the government set about working out what it should actually do, commissioning Trevor Phillips to chair a review of equality in Britain.
Phillips’ report, published earlier this year, shows the challenges facing the new organisation. First, his remit was limited and he had to avoid examining some of the major causes of economic inequality in Britain today. He did though make a bold move in attempting to look beyond the narrow perspectives that had previously been dominant in the equality debate. However, for that he was criticised and his report dismissed by many equality campaigners and lobby groups.
This presents a conceptual and tactical challenge for the new EHRC. Intellectually, it must look to develop the thesis beyond a strand-specific approach to combating inequality. While this might have brought comfort to certain groups in the past, it fails to make the case for the benefits that greater equality might bring to wider society.
So, a major thing the EHRC needs to achieve is to make the case for why inequality matters to everyone. The apparent popularity of the Tories’ tax-cutting plans, however dubious their figures, shows how hard this will be. Labour’s unwillingness to advocate redistribution means that we are on shaky foundations when arguing for a more equal country. The research from the likes of Richard Wilkinson and Avner Offer is clear – the more unequal a nation, the worse the social outcomes for all its people, not just those at the bottom of the scale. The EHRC must take the lead in making this case, for which it needs a scale of ambition, courage and leadership that have been sadly lacking thus far.
The danger is that as well as spurning this chance, it could retreat into a hierarchy of need. The Commission must avoid adopting a lowest common denominator approach whereby the nuances are missed and the big injustices are ducked. Underpinning this new narrative must be a flexibility about which injustices it needs to address.
As well as the Equalities Review, this year the Commission on Integration and Cohesion published its report. This looked at how we can tackle the declining bonds of solidarity between people. We live in a society where different groups of people live side by side, occupy the same space, same schools and shop in the same high streets but rumour and perceptions of injustice can trigger division and conflict. This results in the clustering of communities and erection of invisible barriers.
The challenge of integration is huge. However, the very name of the new organisation says much about its priorities. Integration is no more or less important but it is different and demands different thinking and its own focus. ‘Good relations’ is in the EHRC’s mandate but so far it is very much the poor relation with its role almost non-existent in the organisation’s planning.
This may be unfair as the sheer scale of work being taken into one organisation makes its task almost impossible and it will have a never-ending battery of worthy causes fighting for a limited pot of resources. In taking this on, the EHRC faces the prospect of having few friends. It will always fall prey to those who decry its very existence as ‘political correctness gone mad’; the danger is that it will also lose the support of progressives who feel it is neglecting issues that it should be prioritising. The Brown government offers a stronger commitment to both equality and cohesion in our society. The fear is that he has been bequeathed an institution that is not fit for purpose.