April 20, 2009

The Caribbean-born head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, is blatantly circumventing the law by helping immigrants get banking facilities in this country despite them being specifically forbidden from doing so.

Mr Phillips, whose organisation already draws a cool £70 million per year from the taxpayer, has signed a deal with a financial services company to promote specialist credit cards for immigrants.

In exchange for a fee, Mr Phillips is using his taxpayer-funded stature to promote the prepaid credit cards to tens of thousands of migrant workers who are outlawed from obtaining bank accounts in the UK.

Mr Phillips’s private company, the Equate Organisation, has signed a deal to link up with Toronto-based Mint Technology to market the cards in the UK.

The two companies’ websites carry press releases saying they will help migrant workers gain “access to financial opportunities.”

Mr Phillips previously stepped down as director of Equate after it emerged that the organisation had provided paid advice to Channel 4 during the row over racism on Celebrity Big Brother. But he still owns 70 percent of its shares and brings in new business.

According to newspaper reports, Mr Phillips’s position at the EHRC is already under scrutiny after several senior members of the commission resigned, raising concerns about the way it was run.

Mr Phillips’s latest money making venture is clearly designed to circumvent laws which are supposed to prevent migrants from accessing financial services in Britain. While it may be legal according to the letter of the law, it is clearly contrary to the spirit of the law, and it is about time Mr Phillips was called to account.

* The British National Party has vowed to bring an end to this taxpayer-funded “race relations” industry which has seen no less than six such organisations collapse in financial “mismanagement” in the last year alone.