Ask Trevor Phillips

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Trevor Phillips is the chairman of the Greater London Authority and a leading member for the Labour Group on Public Service and Social Inclusion

As a London councillor, he is elected by one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the UK.

But he has been critical of the lack of political representation for minority groups.

In a recent open letter to the Home Secretary, Mr Phillips wrote that the "apartheid" in the upper reaches of government needs to be tackled.

"By all means be tough on segregation, but also be tough on the causes of segregation," he wrote.

Do you think that ethnic minorities are under-represented in senior positions in the UK? How can greater integration be achieved?

Trevor Phillips took your questions in a live Forum.

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Highlights of the interview

Newshost:
Can I ask you first of all about the major story in the news today and that is the Sangatte refugee camp in France. There are some suggestions there could be a deal on the cards between the British and French Governments on closing it down and sharing the refugees - resettling them half in France and half in the UK.

Wendy from the UK asks: The proposed closure of the Sangatte refugee camp is an important gesture by the French and hopefully it will lead to immigration being dealt with as a pan-European problem. Do you think this is a step forward?

Trevor Phillips:
There are three separate points there. I agree with Wendy that if we can deal with immigration as a pan-European issue, it's very, very important because the whole of Europe is confronted by two things: one is a falling birth rate a growing economy and the need for immigrants but we need to manage that process properly so that those who are coming in know what there here to do and they can find a place in the society and the society can get the best out of them.

As far as the Sangette issue itself is concerned, we shouldn't turn this into a negotiation about how we share out bodies. I think there's something slightly ugly about that. I think that the French really have to be clear about what their policy is in relation to asylum seekers. They can't think of France purely as a sort of way station on the way to England because I think these people deserve better than that. Also the British and French citizens who live on that coast, either in the south east of England or the north west of France, need more certainty.

The third thing is if there is a conversation going on between the British Government and the French Government that is a good thing and I hope that we can reach a solution. I am a little uncomfortable with the idea that what's going to happen now is that we're going to have series of conversations about how, on a bilateral basis, the French and the British share out these rather unfortunate people who have fled and wars and so on.

Newshost:
Sevinge Roberts, London: If Sangatte closes, should London house the refugees?

Trevor Phillips:
I don't think that you can look at it that way. The people who are in Sangatte are refugees who are a French responsibility. The French have to decide first of all what they want to do about those people - do they want to admit them, do they want to give them the opportunity to stay in France or not. Now I know there are some of those people who want to come to London and therefore if they do and they get to the coast having gone through the French process, we then need to consider whether we think that their asylum case is genuine, whether we think that they can make a contribution to society if they're immigrants and so on. But I think that we oughtn't to think of this as a sort of zero-sum game where somehow we've got 1,500 people or so and somehow between us we have to share them out. I don't think that's the right way to look at this.

Newshost:
Susan Stachel, Dresden, Germany How can the existence of both integrated local communities and racially segregated enclaves be explained in London? Should local authorities interfere to foster integration?

Trevor Phillips:
I think it's a very important question. Firstly I would say in fact there are very few what you might describe as racial enclaves in London. I think as I recall the figures, there are fewer than two or three districts which have more than 25% of any single ethnic minority. Even if you talk about areas which are internationally known, like Brixton or Southall, the truth of the matter is that actually although there are substantial proportions of particular ethnic minority groups, there are very, very few places where a single ethnic minority group forms a majority.

The important point about London, unlike New York or Paris, is that it is not a planned city, it's a city that's grown up organically over the centuries. As a consequence, that means that unlike New York where particular ethnic groups live in particular places - you always know if you're in an Italian-American area or an African-American area etc. - London isn't like that. The rich and the poor live pretty close to each other. The wealthiest street in the city, a place called Bishop's Avenue where most of the houses are valued at £10 - £12 million, at the end of that street there's a council estate.

Now I think the most important thing for us is to make sure that there is that social mix and that's kept in London. The way that we are trying to do that through the planning policies of the Greater London Authority, is to insist that all new development must have 50% of what we called affordable housing - that is to say social housing or other housing available for rent. So that we do not have the real ghettoes which are the enclaves of the rich - the gated communities of the millionaires - because I think that is what would begin to destroy the social fabric of London.

Newshost:
Two questions, the first from Alcuin, UK: Is it race or class that holds people back from high-ranking jobs in government?

Peter Hall, London, UK Do you believe that the initiatives to get equal representation for minority groups in Government will succeed?

Trevor Phillips:
You can't say that class has no impact - of course it does. But it is true that race also has a major impact and if you are a black or Asian person that is more likely to be the factor that keeps you out of the place perhaps that you should be.

If you take graduates, the population group with the greatest proportion of graduates in the UK, I believe, are people of African descent. If you look at the Civil Service and you ask yourself what proportion of Africans are in the high reaches of the Civil Service, you will be hard put to register a percentage. It's very, very difficult to find an African person in the high reaches of the Civil Service. So this is not because these people are poor or because they're uneducated, it is because they're black. So I think race plays a very big part here.

Will the Government's plans succeed? Well I think they are at an early stage and the Cabinet Minister, Barbara Roache, who I must say I really admire for the rather robust stance she's taken both on the issue of immigration - she argued for managed immigration before anybody else did - and on the issue of transforming particularly the Civil Service. I think if courage and boldness are anything to count, then I think Barbara Roache's plans will actually make a difference.

Newshost:
Huw Morgan, UK: Why can't a white MP represent ethnic minorities?

Trevor Phillips:
Well they do - I just mentioned Barbara Roache in fact who is my MP in a constituency which is probably something like 30 - 35% ethnic minority - Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and Turkish-Cypriots. The issue is not whether a white MP can represent black people or indeed a minority MP can represent white people - Parmijit Dhanda sits for Gloucester which has a very small ethnic minority population - the same with Ashok Kumar in Middlesborough. The issue is not whether one race can represent another - that's as absurd as saying men can't represent women, the issue is if taken overall, your Parliament is meant to represent your population, you cannot say that the system is working if a particular group of that population is distinctive by their absence.

Newshost:
Darius Laws, Lincoln, England What do you say to the suggestion that setting targets for the representation of ethnic minorities in public office will have long term adverse benefits - as it incites racists?

Trevor Phillips:
I think it only incites racism amongst people who have already decided that they don't like the idea that black or Asian people should have an equal chance. Every time I hear people say, stop talking about these issues because it only makes people feel racist, I think to myself, if I say that one group of people should be equal to another group of people in the society and somebody gets upset about that, then the only conclusion I can draw is that they've decided that group A really shouldn't be equal to group B and in my book that means that they are themselves taking a biased and racists position. So I don't think the fact that we've raised these issues turns people into racists, I think the fact is that people who already want to keep things the way they are seize on this as an opportunity - it's their problem, not my problem.

Newshost:
Rahul, UK We will never move forward by having people force us to integrate. Do you think that we should try and educate children from a young age on race tolerance rather than forcing uncooperative adults to change their ways?

Trevor Phillips:
Nobody could disagree with Rahul but I don't think it's quite as simple as that. Children absorb what they're told by their parents as much as they take what they learn in school. Frankly if they are taught tolerance at school and then they go home and their parents are cursing and damning people from different races, I don't think it's hard to see exactly where they are going to come out. So I do think we have to work with everybody.

Newshost:
John Grove, London, UK Do you think that banning single-faith schools would help end intolerance? Is this something that local authorities should be doing?

Trevor Phillips:
No, quite the reverse. I think it's reasonably well known, that I'm a strong supporter of single-faith schools. Why? First of all because I think that they're better schools, broadly speaking - it's the stock in trade in London that the most dangerous place around about school recruiting time to stand is between middle-class parents and Church schools because the middle classes know what will best for their children and they flock to these schools. My view is I don't see why they should be denied to everybody. One reason they are successful is because they have a strong ethos of learning and so on. I think that should be available to everybody.

Secondly, for 100 - 150 years this country has had literally thousands of successful Church of England, Roman Catholic schools, I don't see why suddenly the moment that Afro-Caribbean Christians or Muslims want to have the same privilege it suddenly becomes evil and unacceptable - I think that's just completely wrong.

Thirdly, I think that in a free society - as in the Netherlands by the way - if parents believe that they want to set up a school with a particular ethos, they should be supported in that because these are community issues. If a community wants to educate its children in a particular way, then they should be allowed to do that. There are protections that we have - national curriculum and so on - which should be enough to assuage anybody who is worried that what we're setting up is sort of Taleban schools - I don't think any of that is going to happen.

The truth of the matter is that all of this is all of this is at the edge of most education. The most significant segregation in education does not lie in the Church schools, where broadly speaking it's one of the few places where black and Muslim children get to sit next to white children in some areas. It is places where the neighbourhood schools have been transformed into mono-racial schools because white flight means everybody has left an area that Asians or black people have moved into and therefore everybody in that school is black or Asian purely because the entire neighbourhood has become black or Asian. The real problem of segregation is not with the faith schools at all, it's actually with the local education authority schools where white flight has isolated a particular school.

Newshost:
T N Ugulla, Tanzanian in Stoke, England I came to England five years ago from Africa. My brief experience here is that ethnic minorities spend a lot more time talking about how disadvantaged we are, rather than tackling the problem of how improve our status - irrespective of race. How do you think we can improve our attitudes and our image?

Trevor Phillips:
I have a little bit of sympathy with what Thomas is saying actually. Probably this may sound slightly hypocritical coming from me of course that you can spend a large amount of your time whingeing about how terrible it is and what people have done to you etc. I don't think there is any case for saying that people should not speak up if they are cases of injustice and bias. But what I think is also important is that people in ethnic minorities should not allow their entire lives to be ruled and circumscribed by what other people do to them. It isn't the case that most of us get up in the morning and think about who is going to discriminate against us today - we get on with our lives.

I think Thomas's implied point, I completely agree with. I just don't think that means that we should ignore the fact that all of the indices and all of the real experience of people from ethnic minorities suggests that there is still discrimination there, still disadvantage and much of that is being frozen and recycled through our education system. We have to get on with our lives but we cannot pretend that by our own individual efforts things will be ok. No matter how high we rise in society, the truth of the matter is that however successful and clever and so on that you are, the averages show that black and Asian people at every stage are disadvantaged by their colour and that cannot be good for our great society.