Britain’s equality watchdog has become “an agent of the Conservative government”, refusing to countenance its staff speaking up on race, an employment tribunal has heard.
Preeti Kathrecha, formerly a senior associate and race protected-characteristic lead at Britain’s equality watchdog, is suing the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) at a Manchester employment tribunal, alleging racial discrimination and unfair dismissal.
She claims she was “punished and silenced” for doing her job by speaking up about race and was told never to use the term “institutional racism”. Kathrecha, who is claiming constructive dismissal, says she was psychologically exhausted when she left the EHRC in July 2021. The watchdog denies all the claims.
Kathrecha said, evidence of institutional racism was ignored in EHRC reports into the NHS and social care, higher education, the Met police, the coronavirus pandemic and the Home Office’s hostile environment policy and ensuing the Windrush scandal.
Kathrecha said there was a lack of BAME representation in senior roles and the watchdog refused to set targets for addressing the deficit because it did not want to attract criticism for not meeting them.
She also claimed that she was asked to sign off the executive summary of the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour party, without being allowed access to the underlying evidence, because the EHRC wanted the signoff from a BAME employee. She refused to do so, describing the request as “upsetting, disrespectful and humiliating”.
The EHRC has described Kathrecha’s claim as “dealing with political matters not relating to the respondent”. It denies that she has been discriminated against on the grounds of her race, harassed or victimised and claims she was not constructively dismissed but resigned in order to take up another job.
Full article here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/04/uk-equality-watchdog-refuses-to-allow-its-staff-to-speak-up-on-race-tribunal-hears
There is other info on her crowd funder where she spells out the name of the EHRC in full in the heading.