A fierce row at the Government’s 16-member board of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has escalated as it emerged that it paid nearly £325,000 to seven senior staff who were re-employed after taking generous early severance packages worth a total of £629,276 between them.
United Kingdom's equalities chief Trevor Phillips, who has been appointed for a second three-year term as chairman of EHRC last week by Harriet Harman, was today criticised by the National Audit Office (NAO), the Government's spending watchdog, for re-hiring seven of his former colleagues on huge payments only weeks after handing them large redundancy pays.
The NAO report said that the ‘special’ payments could not be approved because they were ‘significantly higher’ earnings than their previous salaries. The seven were also offered a ‘loyalty bonus’. It also warned that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ to show that the re-employed staff, who included some of Mr Phillips’s closest personal allies, provided 'value for money' when compared with alternatives.
The seven, who included Colleen Harris, a former press aide to Prince Charles, all worked for Mr Phillips (when he was head of the Commission for Racial Equality) and were given severance payments that in total cost £629,276 when the organisation was wound up. They were then re-employed on a consultancy basis at a cost to the new equalities commission of £323,708.
(See This is London report)
Amyas Morse, the Auditor-General, said:
‘The Equality and Human Rights Commission was established 18 months before it became operational to enable a smooth transition from the three predecessor organisations.
‘But delays in bringing in resources sufficiently quickly meant that, when it started doing its job, it lacked more than half of its complement of directors, and made the mistake of re-employing some senior staff from predecessor bodies without authority.’
The Conservatives said the 'careless waste of taxpayers' money' had been 'totally unacceptable'.
Shadow equalities minister Theresa May, said:
‘Such a careless waste of taxpayers’ money is totally unacceptable. Never has the need been greater for public bodies to demonstrate restraint and value for money.’
The NAO’s hard-hitting report comes at a moment of turmoil for the EHRC as three commissioners resigned last week amid reports of internal dissent over the reappointment of Trevor Phillips as chair.
The commissioners are Sir Bert Massie, former chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, Baroness Campbell, the disabilities rights campaigner, and Professor Francesca Klug.
In his resignation letter to Harriet Harman Harman, Sir Massie said:
‘I have been concerned for some time about corporate governance at the Equality and Human Rights Commission and had hoped that renewed leadership would enable it to achieve its full potential.
'The reappointment of the chairman has dashed that hope and as I cannot agree with the way in which the commission is led. I must, with regret and sadness, offer my resignation with immediate effect.’
Sir Massie, who has been disabled since he was three months old, went on to comparing Mr Phillips with Lord Cardigan, the Crimean war commander who led the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade. 'It is rather as though at Balaklava Lord Cardigan had been reappointed and the remnants of the Light Brigade invited to reapply for their posts,' he said, complaining at Phillips’s treatment of fellow commissioners, The Times reported.
Lord Ousley, former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:
'I would think that the commissioners have resigned out of frustration as a result of the commission not fulfilling the expectations of the many people who had high hopes for it.
'It hasn’t been critical of government where it should have been, it's been too close to government and I think the way it ... failed to merge staff from different backgrounds together is an indictment really,' he added.
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission, a non-departmental body, which was established by the Equality Act 2006, is in charge of delivering the controversial equality measures and receives an annual £70m budget from taxpayers.
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