It’s time to shut down this factory of meddling and nincompoopery

By Quentin Letts
6th March 2012

As the equality quango demands more rights for gypsies, unions, prisoners and terrorists, QUENTIN LETTS says it’s time to give it the chop

Try to imagine a political party with the following manifesto: more rights for gypsies, giving prisoners the vote, being soft on anti-capitalism protesters and making it easier for trade unions to strike.

Readers, I can sense your snouts tingling. I just know you would relish having such a party on the ballot paper — if only to avoid it. Our imaginary political party — perhaps we can call it the Party of Loon — believes terrorism-related offences should carry no higher constraints on the freedom of suspects than other alleged crimes.

Shoplifting and the planting of bombs on the London Underground, in other words, shall be approached equally.

The Loonies (as we will call followers of this Party of Loon) are against prohibiting terrorist organisations because that might infringe their egalitarian rights, poor darlings.

The Loonies argue against the detention of asylum-seekers. They also, rather gratuitously, repeat unsubstantiated slurs about the mistreatment of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

Oh, and they happily spend millions of pounds of public money — your money, taken from your wages — on propaganda officers specialising in race relations, militant secularism and transgender rights outreach. Quite a manifesto, is it not?

How many votes do you think the Party of Loon would receive? Fewer, I suspect, than the Lib Dems or UKIP. It might even do worse than the British National Party, whose uncongenial grunts are usually held to be beyond the pale of the body politic. [ed. This is as tiresome as the obligatory "far-right" epithet they throw around...]

Expensive

A party which stood on the policies I have listed would probably lose its deposit in every constituency throughout the kingdom, save perhaps in trendy Islington.

So why does the current Government, like its Labour predecessor, tolerate just such a platform of Left-wing madness from an expensive state body? And why are we paying at least £70 million a year for the privilege?

The organisation is the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC,) which yesterday presented those damaging proposals — and more — in its lofty-sounding ‘human rights review’.

Confronted by that jumble of letters, EHRC, your eyes perhaps glaze. The same letters, in a slightly different order, stand for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Confusion is to be sympathised with, for both organisations are remote organs of the anti-democratic Left.

The EHRC is the outfit which is led by suave Trevor Phillips, that Labour-leaning friend of Peter Mandelson.

It was set up only in 2007 and it exists to enforce, promote and clarify the egalitarian agenda and equality laws which were pushed through by Harriet Harman in the New Labour years. In short, it is a thorough menace which we can no longer afford. When will the politicians admit as much?

Despite the fancy title, its ‘human rights review’ yesterday was, in many ways, a statement of the obvious. The EHRC, whose officers are paid fat wages to campaign for more equality and human rights, thinks that more must be done to achieve ‘equality’.

Blow me down with a peashooter. Public sector staff engaged in a spot of job justification? You don’t say!

The review was the result of more than two years’ ‘work’ and cost a reported £150,000. That sum, like so much else produced by the EHRC, appears to be disingenuous because it does not include labour costs.

It certainly did not include the £252,000 annual pay of the EHRC’s ‘director of engagement and intelligence’, Richard Emmott.

All human beings are equal, but Comrade Emmott — whose intelligence must be open to question, given the guff he produces — is more equal than others.
Fanfare

A true analysis of the cost of this chin-stroking ‘human rights review’, which was launched with as little press fanfare as possible, would include the price of the thousands of bureaucrats made necessary by the attendant rules and regulations. It would also look at the cost in lost enterprise and business risk-taking as a result of employers feeling constrained by equalities legislation.

The EHRC has used its state funds to assist cases against businesses both large and small.

It supported the now infamous prosecution of Cornish hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull by two gay men they refused a double room. The EHRC wanted to establish that the rights of gay people were higher than the rights of hoteliers to their fundamental Christian doubts about homosexuality.

The EHRC also, last month, tried to force airlines (in particular British Airways) to extend British disability rights to its passengers around the world.

John Wadham, the commission’s highly dogmatic ‘Group Director, Legal’, said after losing the case in the Court of Appeal that he may yet take it to our Supreme Court.

Further legal costs. Further uncertainty to business.

The Commission acts as mothership to a network of law centres, advice bureaux, racial equality councils, disability advice specialists and human rights organisations.

It supports such outfits by dispensing grants.

In 2008-2009, the last year for which figures are listed, those groups included the likes of the Africa Policy Research Network (£7,994); the Mosaic Black and Mixed Parentage Family Group (£28,126); and the Open Clasp Theatre Company (£15,912), which ‘addresses prejudice, challenges stereotypes and raises awareness of inequality and discrimination affecting a) women who identify as lesbians, b) victims of domestic violence, c) people suffering from mental distress, d) people who are subject to bullying (includes homophobic bullying)’.

As the dedications on Radio 2 used to say: ‘And anyone else who knows me.’

What we are looking at here is grievance farming — professional advocates making a good living on the back of some perceived slight.

Sometimes you have to ask if the suffering really exists.

The EHRC paid £35,000 to the National Coalition Building Institute in Lancashire to ‘welcome newcomers to the district by developing a community listening service which will befriend and support newcomers, enable their fuller participation in the community and dispel myths’. Odd.

Lancashire has always struck me as the most welcoming of places. Does it really need such agents of the egalitarian state to act as greeters? Or is this simply about empire building and buttressing politically correct attitudes in officialdom?

Another £35,000 was blown on the British Humanist Association to help ‘increased understanding of issues of religion or belief in the context of equality and human rights within the general public’. Ka-ching!

A further £35,000 was given to a company called Documentary Film-makers Group ‘to promote equal opportunities in the filmmaking industry’. Yet another £35,000 of your loot went on telling Suffolk residents about Zimbabwean youth. Would it not be more in our interest to tell Zimbabwean youth about Suffolk?

The spending went on. Another £35,000 was dropped on a group in ‘the West Yorkshire Sub Region’ (do they mean the West Riding?) as ‘a vehicle to empower Black Minority Ethnic young people to influence local, regional, national and world politics’. Wow. World politics!

With public money allegedly so tight, how can this spending on such palpable nonsense be justified? With Parliament allegedly resurgent, how can MPs tolerate a governmental body which, for instance in its stance on votes for prisoners, is so out of step with parliamentary opinion?

The official line is international and European Union treaties make it impossible to close the EHRC completely, but that the Government has already acted to trim the commission’s money.
Zealous

Behind the scenes, one hears promising noises that this may now lead to sharper action. Home Secretary Theresa May, under whose umbrella the EHRC shelters, is horrified by its ideological tone, and by its sheer waste.

She is of the view that it is a fountain of zealous over-officiousness and needs cutting back ‘to within an inch of its life’, both in its budget and its remit.

The matter has been discussed in Downing Street and Nick Clegg, for once, is apparently not entirely agin the proposal.

The Home Office’s Lib Dem minister, Lynne Featherstone, who is Minister for Equalities, is also said to be comparatively ‘on side’ with Mrs May.

There is a feeling at the Home Office that reductions in the scope of the EHRC can be made within the ‘next few months’ and will not need a parliamentary Bill.

The EHRC is more than an obstacle to economic growth. It is a factory of meddling and nincompoopery making life legal hell for private enterprise.

It is a prize target for a hefty austerity chop and its demise would be cheered by anyone who has to run anything in Britain, not to mention the millions of electors who never voted for the thing in the first place.

Messrs Cameron and Clegg could do with a boost to their popularity: here is an easy vote-winner. More important than that, however, a radical hewing back would be good for the country. Let’s do it, guys.