UK "better than almost any country to live in" for minorities, Trevor Phillips tells Maajid Nawaz

6 June 2020, 16:47 | Updated: 6 June 2020, 18:12

Trevor Phillips on how the UK treats minorities

Trevor Phillips is a former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and he joined Maajid Nawaz to discuss how race relations in the UK are incomparable to the US and other countries.

"If you happen to be a person of colour, this country is better than almost any" Mr Phillips said. Pointing out that police brutality is nowhere near on the scale as visible as it is in the US.

"You are very unlikely to see what happens in Minneapolis, in Florida, in New York happen in any British city" he said and went on to point out that for the most part, racial and ethnic minorities tend to perform well in the UK.

Mr Phillips told Maajid that the UK often receives the best immigrants from disadvantaged countries. "The ones who dream" he said "move, and so we actually get the best in many cases."

Interestingly, the broadcaster told listeners that "the truth of the matter is that not all minority groups are the same" and for this reason he doesn't like using the term BAME when describing those disadvantaged people.

Trevor Phillips told Maajid that "some minority groups for whatever reason do better than others" and went on to read statistics showing Indians and some other South Asian minorities to be better off than others economically.

He revealed that "both here and in the United States, some black groups generation after generation do not" progress up the economic ladder as well as other minorities.

Maajid asked Mr Phillips why it is the case that some minorities are worse off than others. The former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said that the "best places to look are usually education and employment" and added that for the most part, standard and level of education has "improved for almost all children."

However, Mr Phillips noted that through generations, there doesn't seem to be the same social mobility for Afro-Caribbean British people as there has been for other minorities.

"What is the reason that these patterns continue generation after generation" Mr Phillips wondered, unfortunately for Maajid he had no answer to the question.

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