Annual Diversity Lecture addresses question of equality and diversity in the 21st Century

Trevor Philllips calls on scientists to help address the challenges we face - News

Tuesday 13 February 2007
By Naomi Weston

Are we a nation at ease with our diversity, asked Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), at Imperial’s third annual Diversity Lecture last week.

Arguing that we are not a nation at ease with our diversity, Imperial alumnus, Trevor Phillips said that communities need to find ways of coping with increasing migration and diversity. There are currently more people meeting others from different origins than any other time in history, he said, with about 200 million people living outside their country of birth and there are over 300 different languages spoken in London alone.

Firstly, Mr Phillips said that there needs to be more data and information available because currently we do not know very much about migration and the changing diverse climate. "We need to understand how prejudice works", he said to help assess the causes of bias. If we can acknowledge the issues and then proceed to measure them scientifically this will be the start of addressing the issue.

Mr Phillips called upon the help of scientists, and praised the work of Imperial. "There are few black and minority ethnic students at Oxford and Cambridge but Imperial is leading in this field and one in eight students here are of ethnic minority."

Issues of gender, ethnic and religious difference need the appliance of science he stated. "If we are to become a nation at ease with our diversity we urgently need to address a baffling mix of sometimes conflicting priorities."

"We need to understand when inequality is due to social and cultural differences; when it is due to environmental differences – for example the way others react to us because of our colour or ethnicity; and when it is genuinely due to some intrinsic, genetically defined difference," he added.

The issue of health care was also discussed in the lecture. Where you are from affects your health and people from different areas are prone to certain diseases and conditions, therefore, the health service needs to treat everyone according to their needs he said and this will get easier with time as scientists collate more information on this.

"Two of the greatest issues dominating our lifetime are global warming and equality and diversity," stated Mr Phillips. He concluded that there should be no barrier on scientific enquiry and emphasised that all data surrounding equality and diversity issues should be available to everyone.

Notes to editors:

About Trevor Phillips

Trevor Phillips was appointed Chair of the CRE on 1 March 2003 by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett. On 8 September 2006, he was announced as Chair of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), which will take over the work of Britain's three existing equality commissions in 2007.

He is director of Pepper Productions, founded in 1995, and was the executive producer on Windrush, which won the Royal Television Society Documentary Series of the Year award in 1998, Britain's Slave Trade, Second Chance and When Black Became Beautiful. He is vice president of the Royal Television Society.

At present, he is Chair of the Young Adults Working Group of the Financial Services Authority, and a board member of the Almeida Theatre in Islington, Aldeburgh Productions and the Benie Grant Centre in Tottenham. He is patron of The Sickle Cell Society. Between 1993 and 1998, Trevor was Chair of the Runnymede Trust.

Watch the lecture "A Nation at Ease with Diversity?" (Real Player)

Read Trevor Phillips Speech [pdf]