It is a strange relationship/structure that Starmer has set up.
Something like this?
Starmer PM > Harman (Starmer's Advisor)
> WESC > Phillipson (Minister)
Or like this?
Harman (Advisor) > Starmer PM
> WESC > Phillipson (Minister)
Who, if anyone, did he consult?
The Women & Equalities Select Committee?
His Minister?
Why did he feel the need to do this?
And why on earth such a divisive, despised figure as Harman?
Not forgetting that the Cabinet Office has just appointed an Advisor to Phillipson with one of their priorities being:
- Ensuring all LGBT+ people are safe, included, and protected from discrimination including by delivering a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices and also taking wider steps to improve trans equality;
Equality Legislation Advisor & Coordinator
Cabinet Office
Job summary
The Office for Equality and Opportunity (OEO) sits at the heart of the Cabinet Office, leading on some of the government's top priorities.
The OEO consists of the Women & Equality Unit, the Disability Unit and the Race Equality Unit, which look after different portfolios working to Equalities Ministers based in various Departments led by Bridget Phillipson as Minister for Women & Equalities. The Social Mobility Commission secretariat also sits within the OEO and reports to the Social Mobility Commissioners.
Amongst the OEO's current priorities are:
- Ensuring that equalities are at centre of the cross- government work to develop and deliver all the Government's Missions including the Opportunity Mission led by Minister Phillipson as both SoS Education and Minister for Women & Equalities;
- Leading work across government to tackle race inequality;
- Extending gender pay gap reporting requirements, introducing ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting and extending the right to equal pay to ethnic minorities and disabled people;
- Championing the rights of disabled people and working with them, so that their views and voices are at the heart of all that government does;
- Ensuring all LGBT+ people are safe, included, and protected from discrimination including by delivering a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices and also taking wider steps to improve trans equality;
- Improving the evidence base about equalities.
This role is part of the Equality Framework Team (EFT which is responsible for Britain's equality framework, including
legislation such as the Equality Act 2010 and the sponsorship of institutions such as the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The sub-team in which this role sits covers a range of policy relating to equality law, including disability and religion or belief.
----
If I give Phillipson 100% of the benefit of the doubt and she really does think that she is "in charge", how much are the cards being stacked against her getting her way?