Describe your role as CEO of EHRC in three words
Learning, listening and leading. And laughing, if I’m allowed a fourth L – it’s important to enjoy your job.
What’s your proudest moment as CEO?
That’s a difficult question because I could answer in so many ways. In terms of our impact, there was the success of the judicial review in which we intervened which established that employment tribunal fees were unlawful – which affected access to justice for many thousands of people. As an individual, I’ve been proud of the media interest in our work and of successful interviews on programmes like Today which showcase what we do – and equally of giving evidence in Parliament which demonstrate the value of our work. And as a team, I was immensely proud of our response to the pandemic in terms of our swift move to homeworking and our agile response to the many equality and human rights issues which came out of covid-19.
What are you most excited about over the next 12 months?
We’ve set up an important programme on race equality, partly in response to covid-19 and Black Lives Matter, and I am looking forward to what the results are and the impact we will have. I’m also really interested to see what the new normal is going to look like for us and how we can transform after lockdown ends.
What motivates you as a leader?
The team I work with. The people whose lives we impact. And, perhaps most of all, growing as an individual.
What do people not know about the EHRC – but they should?
Quite a lot, because generally there’s a pretty low level of understanding out there. Not many people know that we can use enforcement powers against the Government; that despite losing 70% of our budget since we were established we undertook four public inquiries and two major investigations last year; that we operate strategically as opposed to taking individual cases; that we have considerable international standing and currently chair the Commonwealth Forum of National Human Rights Institutes. As examples of our impact, our work into disabled access to football stadia more than doubled the number of Premier League clubs with the minimum number of accessible toilets. And the monetisation of the guidance we produced for business last year showed that it could lead to £42m savings through legal compliance.
How can the public find out more about, or participate in your work?
Read our website https://equalityhumanrights.com/en. And read the papers. Most of what you read is relevant to our mandate, one way or the other.
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