Sexism in the City

On Sunday 6 September Andrew Marr interviewed Trevor Phillips, Head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Philips says women are losing out on pay and bonuses.

ANDREW MARR:

Well a few weeks ago, you perhaps wouldn't have put money on Trevor Phillips surviving as Head of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission. There was a string of high profile resignations and he was accused of poor leadership. The organisation seemed in turmoil. Well the self-styled equality warrior is still in post, but he's admitted that painful lessons have been learned and he joins me now. Trevor Phillips, you lost a lot of commissioners in a short period of time, and even some of the ones who stayed have been critical. Has this been a chastening experience for you?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Well four of our non-executives out of sixteen departed prematurely. Most of our non-execs, their term of office comes to an end in two months time anyway. But the fact is of course when people leave, especially some of the people who have left prematurely, who were terrific, big figures, very important to us - Baroness Jane Campbell, for example, the leading human rights expert Francesca Klug - it is difficult and you have to reflect what is it that they felt made them have to leave. But in the end, Andrew, the important thing for us is that we deal with some of the most contentious and difficult issues in modern society - gender, religion …

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

… race - so there's always going to be tremendous arguments.

ANDREW MARR:

There are, clearly, but they were very critical of you. And Ben Summerskill, who's still there, was very critical of you. Was there a moment when you looked in the mirror and thought maybe I'm not right for this job, or did you at least think I have made mistakes myself and I've got to learn from this?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Well we as a commission are not even two years old yet. It would be ludicrous to suggest that we've got everything right, and indeed that I've got everything right. Of course you learn. But in the end, you have to think about what really most matters. And what really most matters, I think, is the new Equality Bill that will transform equality law and what we do - the fact that we're distributing £10 million of grassroots organisations, working on fairness and discrimination and so on. These are big things.

ANDREW MARR:

It sounds as if you don't really feel any culpability or that you've got anything wrong yourself?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Not at all, not at all. I think the point is …

ANDREW MARR:

Sorry, not at all - I did get things wrong, or …?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

No, no, I'm not saying that I don't feel that there's anything for me to think about. For example, I would say probably what's come out of this for me is that I need to work harder to make sure, frankly, that I am not the story; that we're not spending …

ANDREW MARR:

Yeah.

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

… three minutes of valuable time talking about me instead of talking about the work that we're going to release tomorrow showing a huge pay gap within the financial services sector. Now that's my mistake and it's something that I have with my colleagues to work on to make sure that it's the work of the commission that is showcased rather than whether somebody likes me or they don't like me and all of that - which is frankly, in the scheme of things, important to me, perhaps important to the organisation, but really not important to the 61 million people in this country who need us to fight prejudice and discrimination.

ANDREW MARR:

But part of the problem is perhaps that you've brought together in a single organisation, the government's brought together in a single organisation issues about gay people, minority communities, women, the disabled, and they may be groups with different views about each other and about equality and what equality means. Are you going to look again at the structure of this single body trying to answer problems and questions from so many different groups?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

We've been thinking about this for some time actually. I think what is true is that when you create a new institution, you've got to make sure that people understand how to work with it. I guess the speed at which we were forced to bring these organisations together and develop them meant that perhaps organisations - for example the ones representing women or advocating for women, some of the race organisations - we didn't really create a structure that allowed them to talk to us on a continuous basis to build a relationship. So we're thinking about how to do that, so that, for example, they will know which is the right commissioner for them to ring up and talk to about an issue. But there's a more fundamental point here. For thirty years we've had anti-discrimination legislation big time in this country and most of it has been focused on individual cases, it's been focused on essentially supporting advocacy. Now what we know is that that's not enough, and that means that we've got to deal with institutional reform and culture change. What we know is that actually if we change things for let's say black people or for women, we tend to improve things for other groups - disabled people, tackling issues against sexual discrimination - so the issue for us is can we do that successfully together?

ANDREW MARR:

Well let's turn to a specific issue that you've mentioned already, which is pay in the City.

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Yuh.

ANDREW MARR:

Now we are hearing a lot about bankers' bonuses, but you're going to try and turn our attention to another question, which is simply what women get paid in the City. Is that right?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Yes, indeed. Tomorrow we'll publish the report of a major formal investigation that we've conducted into the pay gap in the financial services sector. I can't give you the numbers until it's published tomorrow, but I will tell you that it is shocking. I will also tell you that we think that the significant thing is not that people in the City aren't trying. I mean I think it's very important to say a lot of banks, a lot of financial institutions have been trying to deal with this. The problem is they haven't been that successful. Particularly on the issues of bonuses, the gap is huge. And I would simply say the G20 leaders have been talking this week about … this weekend about what to do about bonuses. Yes, by all means talk about their size, but I think they should also turn their attention to the extent to which they're fairly distributed. For this reason: if what you do is you make sure, you create a situation where women are really disadvantaged, you will not get them returning to the industry in their 40s where they can really make a big difference. This is an issue of prosperity, not just fairness.

ANDREW MARR:

Okay. You run this big, new commission, quango. You must be looking at the prospect of the Conservatives coming in with a little bit of apprehension because if they're talking about a "bonfire of the quangos", your quango must be absolutely in line?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

I don't think so. I mean we are completely independent of government and it really … I won't say it doesn't matter who's in government, of course it does, but in a sense we're neutral to the politics of government.

ANDREW MARR:

You don't expect the Conservatives to wind you up?

TREVOR PHILLIPS:

Well I think that there's pretty much a consensus across the political spectrum now that you do have to deal with discrimination, you do have to deal with prejudice, you do have to encourage culture change and institutional reform. I don't think the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are separate from that consensus. So my view, my expectation is of course, like any government, they'll want us to show value for money, they'll want us to be effective, but I don't expect that any government that comes in will essentially be saying we're turning our back on equality and fairness.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright. Trevor Phillips, thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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